If I Could Tell Her

One of the most quietly devastating songs in recent Broadway memory, this duet operates almost entirely in intimate, conversational registers — piano leading gently, strings barely present, the whole arrangement pulling back to let the words and the two voices do the heavy lifting. Ben Platt plays a boy recounting a dead boy's private observations about a girl, using stolen truths to build a lie of connection, and the specific cruelty of the situation sits beneath every tender note. Laura Dreyfuss matches him with a vulnerability that makes the deception exponentially more painful to witness. The melody moves in small, careful steps, almost hesitant, as if the song itself is afraid to push too hard. What it captures brilliantly is the way longing transforms borrowed detail into something that feels like intimacy — the story he tells her becomes the most real thing she's ever been given, even though none of it was his to give. You'd return to this in the specific ache of wishing someone knew you better than they do, or after a moment when connection and deception became indistinguishable.