Four days before Ben Platt’s birthday, he’s come to meet me at Hell’s Kitchen Park on Tenth Avenue. He’s about to turn 23—but it’s “17 if anybody asks,” he says slyly.
That’s because come November 14 he zips up his backpack, grabs his notebook and heads back to high school—the one within Broadway’s Music Box Theatre, where he plays Evan in Dear Evan Hansen, the story of a teen ridden with anxiety who has always felt invisible.