It’s so heartening when you see a talented child star make the leap into adulthood — doing it with class, hard and serious work at his craft and, in effect, honoring his child actor persona and his roles. Young British actor Daniel Radcliffe, aka “Harry Potter” is doing it on Broadway. The New York Post’s review:
Daniel Radcliffe is so adorable in his Broadway musical debut, you just want to pinch his cheeks. It’s not just his youth — the “Harry Potter” star is 21 — but the endearing amount of dedication and enthusiasm he pours into steering the new revival of “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
“This boy is the eagerest beaver of them all,” observes a secretary named Smitty (Mary Faber). She’s talking about Radcliffe’s character, J. Pierrepont Finch, but she might as well be describing the actor. He really exerts himself as an ambitious, manipulative striver who, contrary to the title, climbs the corporate ladder by trying hard — at outwitting the competition.
After “Equus,” Radcliffe aims to establish himself as a quadruple threat: He acts, sings, dances and delivers a perfectly fine American accent. The effort put into the performance is noticeable — you feel the hours of rehearsal, especially during the dance numbers — and it’ll be interesting to revisit the show in a few weeks, when he’s relaxed into the role.
At the end of her extensive review Elisabeth Vincentelli writes:
Welcome to the wonderful world of musicals, Daniel. We hope you’ll stick with it.
Hopefully he just doesn’t stick with musicals but with the seriousness with which he tackles his roles and the fact that he is — in this world of wealthy athletes and actors who sometimes deserve more contempt than celebrity due to the excesses, arrogance and behavior that makes them rich spoiled brats more than worthy role models — a TRUE role model.
Somewhere, the “real” Harry Potter must be smiling.
EDITOR’s NOTE: Due to a technical glitch the system put in the wrong link and not the link that was copied and pasted. It was only up on TMV for a few minutes, but we regret the error.
UPDATE: Capital New York:
Part of it, in fact, is the athleticism he brings to the role. The opening scene doesn’t prepare you for it: he seems strangely earthbound as dancers in business attire swirl around him. But by his next number, when his character has snagged a job in the mailroom, he’s bouncing over piles of packages like an acrobat. Radcliffe probably spends more time aloft than his counterpart in Spider-Man. Except for a very brief scene suspended on a scaffold (he’s a window washer intent on moving up in the world) he does it all without the benefit of winches and pulleys and harnesses. The music starts and he’s aloft. He jackrabbits over desks, careens over couches, and tumbles over tables.
But for the number “Brotherhood of Man,” the show’s joyfully over-the-top finale, Radcliffe proves he’s more than just a stage athlete when he leads the cast in a rousing song and dance that elicits several rounds of applause before its last note. If people wondered whether Radcliffe could sing or carry an American accent, they were certainly surprised at his confident footwork, dancing being less prominent on his resume anyway than acting or singing is.
So, to the singing: It’s not the strongest voice, but the role of J. Pierrepont Finch has traditionally gone to actors who could manage the singing, and not singers who could manage the acting: Rubber-limbed Robert Morse in the original production in 1961, or Matthew Broderick in the 1995 revival. The point is a pleasant voice, the voice of a character who follows the advice of a how-to guide to make his way from the mailroom to chairman of the board of World Wide Wicket. He’s an everyman, and Radcliffe’s voice works especially well in the ballad “I Believe in You,” the hero’s hymn to himself as he gets ready for a big meeting.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.