| It was a little weird at first, Erin
Tobin said, seeing Harry Potter right there on the stage without his pants, or
indeed any of his clothes. Not actually Harry Potter, of course, since he is fictional, but the next best thing: Daniel Radcliffe. who plays him in the movies. Now 17. Mr. Radcliffe has cast off his wand. his broomstick and everything else to appear in the West End revival of Peter Shaffer's "Equus." He stars as Alan Strang, a disturbed young man who, in a distinctly un-Harry-Potterish moment of frenzied psychosexual madness, blinds six horses with a hoof pick. To make it clear what audiences are in for, at least in part, photographs of Mr. Radcliffe's buff torso, stripped almost to the groin, have been used to advertise the production. It is as jarring as if, say, Anne Hathaway suddenly announced that instead of playing sweet-natured princesses and fashion-world ing6nues, she wanted to appear onstage as a nude. murderous prostitute. To explain how is surprising the change of Radcliffe to the audience, the author mentions Anne "Equus" opened last week, and the consensus so far is that Mr. Radcliffe has successfully extricated himself from his cinematic alter ego. Considering that playing Harry Potter is practically all he has done in his career, this is no small achievement. "I think he's a really good actor, and I sort of forgot about Harry Potter." said Ophelia Oates. 14, who saw the play over the weekend. "Anyway, you can't be Harry Potter forever." In The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer said that "Daniel Radcliffe brilliantly succeeds m throwing off the mantle of Harry Potter, announcing himself as a thrilling stage actor of unexpected depth and range." Mr. Radcliffe told The Daily Telegraph that "I thought it would be a bad idea to wait till the Potter films were all finished to do something else." There are still a few to go. The fifth, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," is scheduled for release on July 13. and Mr. Radcliffe has signed on for the final two installments as well. (Meanwhile, the seventh and last book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," will hit stores on July 21.) Harry and Alan could not be more dissimilar as characters, even if both "come from quite weird backgrounds," as 13-year-old Ella Pitt, another recent theatergoer, put it. (And no. she declared, she was not too young for all the nakedness, swearing and sexuality.) Both characters have unresolved issues relating to their parents: Harry, because his are dead, and Alan, because his have driven him insane. But when it comes to romance, for instance, the celluloid Harry has yet to kiss a girl; the big moment comes in the forthcoming film. Meanwhile, Alan in "Equus" not only engages in some serious equi-erotic nuzzling with an actor playing a horse, but is also onstage, fully nude. for 10 minutes, during which he nearly has sex with an equally naked young woman. |