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Your support makes all the difference.This is what happens when you give your stylist the Easter break off…
No, that’s not Daniel Radcliffe’s holiday garb. The former Harry Potter star is performing in a Broadway play, The Cripple of Inishmaan, which opened on Sunday night.
It sounds a far cry from his adventures at Hogwarts.
Written by Martin McDonagh, the play is set in 1934 and the story follows disabled teenager Billy Claven, portrayed by Radcliffe, who lives on the remote isle of Inishmaan off the west coast of Ireland. Mocked by the locals, who refer to him as “Cripple Billy”, he is desperate to break away from the tedium of his rural life, and the perfect opportunity presents itself when word arrives that a Hollywood film is being made on a neighbouring island.
And did he manage to enchant the audience?
The critics have been heaping praise on the 24-year-old actor. According to The New York Times, Radcliffe is “entirely convincing as the boy who is regarded as least likely to succeed at pretty much anything in his God-forsaken rural Irish town”. Entertainment Weekly noted his “Irish accent is more than passable and, while he doesn’t stint from the role’s physicality… he refrains from milking the disability for easy sympathy.”
Merlin’s beard, he’s done well!
Radcliffe is no novice when it comes to treading the boards. Since the Harry Potter film franchise concluded with the final instalment in 2011, he has appeared on Broadway in Equus and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
So has he finally said “Avada Kedavra” to his former guise?
Slowly but surely Radcliffe is killing off the last vestiges of the boy wizard, carving out a successful acting career on stage and screen as an adult. Last year his turn as Allen Ginsberg in the Beat generation biopic Kill Your Darlings was hailed as his “best post-Potter performance” and next year he will appear on the big screen again in a new cinematic adaptation of Frankenstein as the irresponsible doctor’s assistant Igor. At this rate he’ll no longer be known as the boy who lived but the man who won a Tony.
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