Menier Chocolate Factory<\/a> set up as a lamplit cabaret (set by Scott Pask), Platt is Trevor Copeland, a crooning bar-singer reliving the years he spent with songwriter Arthur Brightman, played with plate-spinning brilliance by Gregor Milne. The history of their love is told through stories shaped around American Songbook-style music, only occasionally syrupy, as the pair slip in and out of Sonnenblick\u2019s inventions: now a jaunty knee-bouncing number; now a big-band ballad.<\/p>\nWhile Platt is the show\u2019s star, Milne is its anchor, at once believable as the troubled genius delivering his lover new songs like cups of tea, and the steady hand behind the piano, serving as the story\u2019s pulse as well as the focal point for the flawless live band. There is a quiet power in the two men singing each other love songs, as they begin to do in public, with their clearly queer lyrics losing some audiences and gaining others. When politics comes knocking on their underground gay club\u2019s doors, they face a fundamental choice: to protest, or assimilate. Central to their differences and their downfall, this dilemma gives grit to their otherwise largely jazz-smooth lives.<\/p>\n
Darkness seeps in \u2026 Gregor Milne and Ben Platt in Midnight at the Never Get. Photograph: Johan Persson<\/p>\n
As darkness seeps into the story, we start to make sense of our narrator\u2019s gaps in time and memory. Director David Cromer (The Fear of 13) retains the show\u2019s intimacy by keeping things simple, with a minor magic trick \u2013 worth keeping secret \u2013 wrapping up the story\u2019s loose threads, though the gut-punch would hit even harder with a trim. Midnight at the Never Get sees music as both heartbreak and cure. With one eye on who\u2019s about to walk in through the door, it reveals what love leaves you with when all else is lost: songs to sing at the top of your lungs to the memory of who you used to be.<\/p>\n
At Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 12 September<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Platt\u2019s sky-gliding voice was made for decades gone by. The Tony, Emmy and Grammy award-winning actor (Dear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-703562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}