Last week Buddy, one of our favorite commenters, took the long journey across the ocean to good old England. During his vacation he got the chance to see Equus, the controversial play starring Daniel Radcliff.
Here’s his take on the show, exclusively written for
GTS
A West End theatre casting a “star” like Daniel Radcliffe in a play shouldn’t surprise; unlike musicals, where the title attracts the audience, theatres often publicize a production by highlighting the performers (for example, this week in London, the billboard for The Glass Menagerie has Jessica Lange’s name as large as the title). British actors measure their skills by acting in the theatre; I read once that some actors will do television and movies simply for the money so that they can afford to do stage. The play requires Radcliffe to be nude for a considerable period in the second act, and so much of the preproduction buzz was about Harry Porter being nude (Perez Hilton had audience members report on Radcliffe’s “size.”). Radcliffe surely helped sell tickets to a play that has not been produced in a West End theatre in over thirty years. In the audience for the production that I saw were many younger people, mostly female who stereotypically would be the audience for the big musicals like Wicked. Those who grew up with Harry Porter might not have ever heard of Equus-much less attend a performance of it.
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