Menier Chocolate Factory

The lighting may be dim in the Menier Chocolate Factory’s auditorium – reconfigured to resemble an atmospheric 1960s NYC cabaret club – but the star wattage is bright. It’s not hard to see why American musical theatre powerhouse Ben Platt was attracted to the British debut of Mark Sonnenblick’s 2018 off-Broadway show. A two-hander, it’s a great vehicle for his talents as a singer and actor.  But there’s more to this funny, sad and wistful piece – directed here by David Cromer – than that. It’s New York, 1965, and Platt is Trevor, the singing half of a performing and romantic duo, alongside songwriter Arthur (Gregor Milne). It’s an era when being gay is a threat to life and livelihood. We are Trevor’s audience in smoky Greenwich Village club the Never Get as he tells – and sings – the story of their turbulent relationship and contrasting careers.  The way in which Sonnenblick, partly through Trevor’s casual asides, creates in Arthur a fictional superstar of the great American songbook, is a delicious blurring of reality and theatrical invention. This is heightened by his score and lyrics, which are lushly evocative of Cole Porter. They feel like songs you almost remember. But as Arthur (initially) insists on keeping male pronouns in these classically framed love songs, they become – in one of the show’s strongest through-lines – a powerful social lens. But there’s an engrossingly thorny knottiness – which Sonnenblick, to his credit, doesn’t untangle – to Trevor’s increasing...