‘Being American feels helpless and scary’: actor Ben Platt on nerves, queer songs and why he couldn’t do it without his husband

The star of Dear Evan Hansen plays a 1960s Greenwich Village crooner in hit queer musical Midnight at the Never Get. It’s the perfect outlet for his anxiety, he says In performance, Ben Platt is a mellifluous singer and loose-limbed dancer, with a fizzy back-note of neurotic New York. The stage – most famously, as star of Dear Evan Hansen – is his safe space. In person, in a south London rehearsal room, he is sweet, earnest, nervy. He crosses his legs, knots his arms about him. The chat roams…