Daniel Radcliffe on stage

[MetalHeart]

Sorry I wasn't sure where to put this (or if it had already been posted before) but um. My friend Misty had posted this in her journal a few days ago, and I thought I would share!

 

Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe is to appear on the London stage next year, playing a stable boy who has an erotic relationship with his horses.

 

 

Richard Griffiths will co-star in the revival of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus, to open in the capital in March.

 

Radcliffe and Griffiths are currently shooting the fifth Harry Potter film.

 

The role will require Radcliffe, 17, to appear naked and symbolically blind six horses. Richard Burton and Peter Firth starred in the 1977 film version.

 

Firth played disturbed stable boy Alan Strang in the original London stage production and later on Broadway.

 

Equus will be directed by Thea Sharrock, director of the Gate fringe theatre in Notting Hill, west London.

 

The controversial play marks a departure for Radcliffe, whose only previous stage appearance in London was as a guest star in The Play What I Wrote, directed by Kenneth Branagh.

 

He recently completed filming December Boys, an independent Australian film about four orphans growing up in the 1960s.

[Senshik]

The role will require Radcliffe, 17, to appear naked and symbolically blind six horses. Richard Burton and Peter Firth starred in the 1977 film version.

 

Werd.

 

That's acutally pretty funny. I wonder how "deep" it's going to be... the plot I mean...

 

Thanks for sharing MH!

[Jesi]

Personally I would fly to London -just- to see this on stage. Not, mind you, to see Dan Radcliffe's goods - that's just disturbing, he's Harry Potter for crying out loud - But because I think Equus is really a fascinating piece of art that has gone long underappreciated. I really hope (though I know better) that the media doesn't trivialize this play by focusing solely on the fact that Dan Radcliffe is going to be naked. There (if I remember right) are only one or two scenes where the actor is in the nude on stage. Just that news alone will send the squealy HP fangirls busting down the doors, I know. But once they're in the auditorium they're in for a disturbing reality check. For those not in the know, I found a really good summary of the story:

 

Equus centers on the explosive encounters between seventeen-year-old Alan Strang, who has blinded six horses with a spike, and Martin Dysart, the middle-aged psychiatrist who agrees to treat him. Shaffer based the plot on an allegedly true story told by a friend about a young man who blinded a stable of horses. Shaffer wrote Equus to "create a mental world in which the deed could be made comprehensible" (p. 9), and the play is structured like a mystery, as Dysart struggles to determine what drove Alan to commit the crime. But Equus is far from a conventional mystery, in which solving the crime relieves tension and restores a stable society. Instead, Dysart's search for the meaning of Alan's act leads him to doubt his own vocation and integrity. The closer he comes to understanding his patient's motives, the more confused Dysart is about how he should respond to Alan and the mental world he has created. The ultimate, insoluble mystery is embodied in the horse-god Equus himself. At the beginning of Act Two , Equus asks Dysart, "Do you really imagine you can account for Me?" (p. 75). The play issues readers and audiences the same challenge.

 

 

Outside the absolutely raw performances of the actors, the most interesting point about Equus is the stage setup. All of the players sit at the edge of the stage, observers until their scene is called, and in the original stage setup, bleachers were set along the back of the stage, to give the impression that the audience surrounded the action. Scenes involving horses are portrayed by actors wearing brown track suits and wearing large horse-head shaped abstract metal frames above their heads. Those scenes are projected as a surreal dream-like flashback and even though they tend to be in slowed-motion, they are a very vivid and intense view into the mindset of the young Alan.

 

Personally I'm elated that Equus is being brought back to the stage, and that Dan Radcliffe is going to be starring. The Harry Potter movies don't give this kid the room he needs to really blossom as an actor, and once the HP flicks have run out, he's going to need to have some diversity and dramatic experience in his resume if he wants to keep really acting. Pitching a hissy fit while wearing a wizard robe doesn't make you an actor capable of dramatic performance, it makes you a drama queen and a puppet.

 

Good luck to him.

[Reverend Jax]

That really is not a flattering picture of him. He looks like Gollum or something.