The Associated Press reports that Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, who turned 17 five days ago, will bare all in a London stage production of Equus that opens in March of next year:
The play delves into the psyche of a boy named Alan Strang who blinds six horses with a metal spike. The production is scheduled to open next March in the West End theater district, said spokesman Peter Thompson.
“It is an extraordinary play, and he’s very much looking forward to the role,” Radcliffe’s spokeswoman, Vanessa Davies, said Friday. “He is maturing as an actor and beginning to take on new and challenging roles.”
In one scene the actor playing Strang is required to simulate sexual ecstasy while riding a horse naked. But Davies said nudity was not the focus of the play.
Richard Griffiths, who plays Harry’s Uncle Vernon in the films, is lined up to play the psychiatrist who interviews the troubled youth.
Now, it’s been a while since I read the play and saw the 1977 film version, so correct me if I’m wrong, but is there not also a rather intimate sex scene with a woman in there, somewhere? In the 1974 Broadway version, she was played by Roberta Maxwell, who may be best known now for playing Sean Penn’s mother in Dead Man Walking (1995) and Jake Gyllenhaal’s mother in Brokeback Mountain (2005); and in the film, she was played by Jenny Agutter of Walkabout (1971) and Logan’s Run (1976) fame.
Between this and the news about 12-year-old Dakota Fanning‘s rape scene in the upcoming independent film Hounddog, I imagine it won’t be long before we see feature pieces on whether it’s healthy for our child stars to be maturing quite this quickly.
Oh, and just for the record, Peter Firth, who played Alan Strang in both the 1974 Broadway version and the 1977 film version, turned 21 around the time the Broadway version premiered, and he turned 24 around the time the film version came out.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In