One of my good friends, Rosie, in the UK went to see Dan’s play Equus on Saturday and she has written a wonderful review about it for me!

Equus, featuring Daniel Radcliffe as Alan Strang and Richard Griffiths as Martin Dysart, is a controversial yet absolutely fascinating play. The press has featured on it being Daniel Radcliffe’s west end debut with him doing scenes of nudity and smoking a cigarette. This is not at all fair, because of the amount of hard work put into this play and the brilliance of it. It is so much more than ‘Harry Potter’ taking of his clothes.

The opening has you gripped within seconds, the dark and eeriness in the atmosphere as Daniel slowly walks out to embrace with the horse. From here on you are so engrossed in the play you don’t even stop to think that the famous Harry Potter is on stage, it is Alan Strang in desperate need of help.

The story line is that Alan, who has been brought up in all the normal ways, has a strange obsession with horses, going as far to worship them. I will try not to give much away as I encourage most to go see it for themselves! The play is linked together in such a clever way its unbelievable, it flows from one scene to another, from past to present without you even realising it. The plot is that his psychiatrist Dysart has to find out where this obsession originated from and how to ‘cure’ him.

The play has you gripped the whole way through; the lighting and movement effects of the stage, which can spin around, significantly enhance this. All is used is a raised stage and 4 blocks which they move around in a very clever way to suit each scene. Never do you notice they are moving them as it fits into the story line so well each time they do so.

The main horses, named nugget, played by Will Kemp was superbly done and so where all the remaining 5 horses, they moved in such a way you completely forget that they are humans with appropriate clothing and head gear. You can clearly see how much effort was put into choreographing the movement of their bodies to suit how horses move and this makes the play seem so much more real to the audience.

Much speculation has been around Daniel’s nude scene with Jill Mason played by Joanna Christie. This scene fitted into the play incredibly well, it would not have given of the same effect of vulnerability and the desperate need for help if he wore clothes. Daniel defiantly proved himself as way more then just Harry Potter he acted brilliantly and really got across the characters character with some very difficult scenes. Backed of course by a superb cast including Richard Griffiths, Will Kemp, Joanna Christie and many more. The brilliant cast, superb lighting and movement makes an absolutely magnificent play all the way through and is a must see to anyone not just Radcliffe or Harry potter fans.

A truly fascinating play.
By Rosie Weldon

See a picture she took HERE