“Midnight at the Never Get” at the Menier Chocolate Factory

Louise Penn in South London
★★★★☆
22 July 2026

The place is the back of the Never Get, a cabaret club in New York; the year is around 1965; the time is midnight. The Menier’s auditorium has been transformed by set designer Scott Pask into that very club – with cabaret tables, decorated with overflowing ashtrays, and banquette seats.

Ben Platt as Trevor.
Photo credit: Johan Persson.

We are here for a concert by “what’s left of” Trevor Copeland (Ben Platt), a singer of intense emotions and reflective chat. Early on, there are strong hints that this isn’t quite what it seems. His accompanist, Arthur Brightman (Gregor Milne), has “died that morning” but he’s due to arrive here. In the meantime, Trevor and Arthur will play out the story of their collaboration and love affair.

Book, music, and lyrics for Midnight at the Never Get (which premiered Off-Broadway in 2018) are by Mark Sonnenblick, who slowly creates Arthur as a superstar of American composition. He first sounds like Cole Porter, creating love songs with male pronouns, flirting with the illegality of having Trevor sing them and revelling in being different.

Director David Cromer has Trevor breaking the fourth wall early on – we are watching a cabaret, after all. He pinpoints friends at the table, and at one point he and Arthur break free of the stage as the band is slowly revealed behind cleverly integrated windows.

Midnight at the Never Get is a subversive love story set against the juncture of standard song recordings and the birth of pop. The Never Get is a “bottle bar”, so called because bars could not sell alcohol to gay people. It attracted a gay crowd in relative safety, tolerated by the police and protected by the mafia owners.

Danger is always around the corner, though. We hear of the murder of the original hostess and witness an account of a raid where Trevor and Arthur both spend a night in the cells. We hear of prejudice from an industry who just wants boy meets girl tunes.

The Never Get was not a real bar – it is named because of “never get fixed, never get mopped, never get paid”. You might also add in Sonnenblick’s musical that you never get what you want. Trevor wants to live as a gay man and have a career in the big time.

Arthur defends the lyrics he wrote for the partnership, at first, before Connie Francis, Eydie Gormé, and Peggy Lee come to call, giving him the veneer of respectability. Platt and Milne navigate this intense and complex partnership, personal and professional, with strong chemistry and total understanding.

Watching from a cabaret table, it is easy to become immersed in the idea of being in this club that walks the line of respectability. Platt makes Trevor both brave and pathetic, emphasizing the loner behind the microphone who finds purpose in protest whatever the cost.

The six-piece band make the music soar; Platt and Milne – and later, Barry James who offers a sweet and affecting cameo appearance – convince with their vocals and storytelling. The Tony, Emmy, and Grammy Award-winning (Dear Evan Hansen, The Last Five Years) Platt is obviously the draw here, as this is his UK stage debut, and he’s great; but keep an eye on Milne, who matches him at every turn.

Midnight at the Never Get is tender, thoughtful, and tenacious. It isn’t overly political, although the Stonewall Riots are mentioned and there’s a tongue-in-cheek number relating the abuses of “the boys in blue”. By the end, the show risks falling into sentimentality, but pulls itself back at the last minute.

Through the sobs that dot through the audience, there’s a defiance on stage in the final duet. We may not be truly “here”, and neither are they, but these 90 minutes have given us an enlightening peek behind the mystique of the gay scene of the past, and the decisions that some artists had to make.