2. “Dear Evan Hansen”

I managed to get tickets to see the original cast in New York maybe three years ago. My wife and my eldest son and I went knowing that this was very much the hot ticket but not really knowing why. And we just sat there transfixed. Ben Platt was extraordinary with his kind of chocolate voice, and there’s an amazing story that’s told with such energy and these fantastic tunes.

There’s something very exciting when you feel like you are ahead of the curve of your peer group — to go home and brag about having seen something very special — because it was years before it would come here. Then last year, I went to see the opening in London, with a brand-new guy called Sam Tutty, and he’s equally exciting.

3. “Pod Save America”

As the world has politically gone to what some might call hell in a handcart, I find myself more and more obsessed with following the ins and outs on both sides of the Atlantic, and what happens next — because your politics are so inextricably linked to ours. Of course, [this podcast] is unashamedly partisan. The four guys [Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor] used to work for Obama, and it comes from a left-wing, Democrat perspective. But it does it with a wit and a clarity and a slight anarchy that I find very useful to understand how American politics works.

4. Marvel Comics

I used to get a Hulk comic when I was little, and it was always Marvel Comics over DC Comics. I never quite connected with Batman and Superman. I realize these are slightly preposterous words to use, but I find Marvel characters somehow more believable. I abandoned them for a bit as a young man trying to be windswept and interesting. But in my slightly more mature years, I’ve allowed myself to admit that I like having Marvel Comics in my life. Of course a few years ago I got to be one of those characters [Kilgrave in Netflix’s “Jessica Jones”], which was a strange through-the-looking-glass moment.

5. “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”

I’m doing this play called “Good” [scheduled to begin in October at the Playhouse Theater in London], which is about a genuinely good man in the run-up to the Second World War, the rise of Hitler, and how he comes to terms with life under that regime. And how human beings adapt and find what they formerly found appalling perfectly acceptable — to overlook the occasional immorality because it’s easier than standing up and fighting it. I’m trying to get my head as deep into that world as possible, so I’m reading the largest book I’ve ever tried to consume. It’s an absolute doorstop. And this extraordinary retelling of those events sends a chill. It feels much more like a warning of things that might come back.