Ben Platt Debuts First Queer Stage Role in London
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- Ben Platt is performing in 'Midnight at the Never Get' at London's Menier Chocolate Factory through 12 September, playing 1960s Greenwich Village cabaret crooner Trevor — his first time playing a queer character on stage and singing 'expressly queer songs with details of queer romance.'
- Platt credits husband Noah Galvin — currently starring in 'Hit Machine' at Soho theatre — as 'a huge factor' in managing chronic anxiety, alongside having 'something creative to focus on.'
- Platt describes being American as 'quite helpless and scary' amid what he sees as a reversal of gay-rights progress, while praising New York mayor Zohran Mamdani as representing 'a different class of politics, as opposed to abusive painful noise.'
- Platt is roughly a third of the way through filming Richard Linklater's 'Merrily We Roll Along' alongside Paul Mescal and Beanie Feldstein; the shoot runs 19–20 real-time years, meaning it won't wrap until 2038, when Platt will be 45.
- Platt, now 32 with 25 years of stage experience, won a Tony for 'Dear Evan Hansen' and was derided as 'too old at 27' when cast in the 2021 film adaptation, but says he's 'happy that the movie exists' and 'hope[s] history will be kind to it.'
- Platt calls Stephen Sondheim 'my rabbi, my imam' and names George in 'Sunday in the Park with George' as the role he covets 'above all others,' while also hoping, 'like every gay person in the world,' to one day perform 'Angels in America.'
- The show is directed by David Cromer, with songs Platt calls 'extraordinary' by Mark Sonnenblick (of 'KPop Demon Hunters').
Why it matters: Platt's London cabaret debut lands at a moment when he openly frames American LGBTQ rights as regressing — making this his most explicitly personal stage role yet. The 2038 Merrily timeline locks him into a roughly two-decade artistic bet with Linklater, Mescal, and Feldstein that will define his mid-career arc.
