Monday, February 19, 2007

So many possible puns

I was asked in an email why I had not commented on Daniel Radcliffe (17), aka boy-wizard Harry Potter, appearing naked on-stage in Equus. The late-night talk show hosts have done so many jokes there seemed to be little to add.

Dan does seem like a hairy lad for being only 17 (publicity photos showing everything but his winkie have been published by the producers -- they have only done two un-dressed rehearsals so no Photoshop-free nude pixs have circulated -- expect a flood of those when he turns 18 in a few weeks).

He also seems very short to me for the part (5' 5 1/2") -- I read that there are going to be real horses on stage, presumably not Clydesdales, but maybe he can act taller. In the original staging of the play in London and New York, actors played the horses (also see below). [In the original stage version, some of the audience sat on the stage. The actors also sat on the stage during scenes in which they did not appear. Which means that as an audience member you might have been sitting on-stage between a naked Peter Firth and a guy in a horse suit. This mix of audience and cast members is still how the play is usually staged.]

The movie version is very good, but very intense. Unless it has been edited out, there is probably about 10 minutes total of nudity. It's rated R.

Note: Equus was a shocker when first produced on stage and film because of the male nudity. It then fell into 30 years of disfavor -- it is a difficult play to stage and is very, very wordy. It has recently become a favorite of college theaters and east and west coast off-Broadway theaters -- often with a minor celebrity playing the naked boy. In most recent presentations, however, the horse suits are gone and what you usually have are six very muscular actors playing the horses with little or no costume. This has changed the play, in my opinion, from one about animal sexual-eroticism to one more purely about homosexual-ism (naked guy rides naked guys pretending to be horses). Therefore, in my opinion, the words being said no longer seem to make sense with what you see, and there are a lot of words.



6 comments:

Pixie said...

Hmm I bet it wouldn't have fallen into such bad favour had it been all naked women ;)

:P fuzzbox said...

So I suppose that it is like a really wordy homosexual Donkey Show?

Metal Mark said...

I am most scared off by those horse head frame things in the bottom picture.

David Amulet said...

The whole controversy over him being in this play annoys the proverbial crap out of me.

People are talking about boycotting future Harry Potter films because he dared take another acting gig that isn't as teeny-bop schlock. This is almost as pathetic as the censorship of old cartoons that show politically incorrect activities like smoking or catcalling!

-- david

JM said...

How are they going to get the real
horses to sit--heehee!

Jim said...

Pix -- there is a version with all naked women, it's called Las Vegas :)

Fuz -- I forgot about the donkey show, most readers will not know what that is, probably best that they don't.

mm -- that photo looks like some really bad fraternity or lodge initiation.

da -- I agree, I think I should be able to see the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan and the old Amos & Andy shows -- I hate censorship!!!!

angel -- I'm not really sure that they are using real horses, it was just mention in one article that I read -- all of the photos with horses that were released are from a photo shoot in a London warehouse