Ben Platt is Playing Himself, For Once, at the Palace

In May, Tony Award winner Ben Platt, best known for playing the title role in Dear Evan Hansen and, most recently, 2023's Parade, will take to the Broadway stage starring as… himself. “I want to make sure that I’m being as transparent as possible because it’s the one time I’ll be on a stage as myself,” Platt told Tamsen Fadal on The Broadway Show. “The only experience that I haven’t had, in the context of Broadway, is to lose that one last little bit of safety and separation that comes from character and being in another person’s piece.”

Platt’s three-week concert residency, from May 28 through June 15, is a celebration of his third album, Honeymind, which will be released on May 31. “I started writing it in the spring of ‘22 and wrote a lot of it in Nashville, with writers there who really prioritize emotional authenticity and storytelling.” Even during the writing process, performing the songs live was always in the back of Platt's mind. “That’s the part I live for.”

The concert residency will be the first show at the newly refurbished Palace Theatre, which closed for renovations in 2018 as part of the $2.5 billion TSX Broadway development project. (As part of that development, the theater was raised 30 feet, making room for commercial space.) In its heyday as a vaudeville house, the Palace hosted the likes of Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, Ethel Merman and other performers not necessarily named Ethel. In 1951, Judy Garland performed her comeback show at the Palace for 19 weeks.

Platt has loved Judy Garland since he was a little boy, when he used to dress up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. “I have portraits of her all over my house. For every birthday, my fiancé finds some other piece of Judy art for me. So just being on any stage that she’s been on, that feels very special.”

Over the course of the conversation, Platt also talked about his upcoming nuptials ("The sweatiness of the dance floor is how I will judge the success of the wedding") as well as filming the movie adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Richard Linklater. “It’s just crazy that we’re trying to do it,” he said. “We sort of have to treat it like little short films that happen every so often because if you look too far ahead, it’s like, how are we ever going to get there?”

He added, “It’s such a gift and it’s also a way to just have Sondheim guardian angeling my life for the next 18 years.”

Watch the full interview below.