ARTS & CULTURE
Daniel Radcli≠e’s newBroadway role
new york » The one thing Daniel Radcliffe always has to adjust to whenever he’s on stage in America is how happy Americans are to see Daniel Radcliffe onstage.
The former “Harry Potter” star is always greeted by a burst of applause when he makes his entrance on Broadway, no matter if it’s a musical or a drama. The first time it happened was in “Equus” in 2008 and he had to stop himself from laughing.
“It’s just something we are so unaccustomed to in England,” Radcliffe says. “Obviously, it’s a sign of being very liked, and that’s lovely. It’s just something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to.”
He’d better try: The actor is starring in MartinMcDonagh’s barbed comedy “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” playing the disabled orphan Billy in 1930s Ireland who harbors an unlikely dream of Hollywood stardom.
First staged in 1996, the play is a typically potent mix of comedy and cruelty. This production, directed by Michael Grandage, debuted in theWest End last year. InManhattan, it’s at the Cort Theatre.
McDonagh’s plays are littered with violence— hands separated from limbs, people tortured upside down — but Radcliffe says “The Cripple of Inishmaan” may knock some people off-guard.
“People who know the more brutal side of him will come to this play and be quite surprised by how moving it actually is,” he says. “It’s a beautiful play and a sad play and hopefully a play that will get people laughing despite themselves.”
Radcliffe poured himself into researching physical disabilities so he could be as true to life as possible.
“I want to make it as authentic as I possibly can and by that I didn’t just mean learning the physical, superficial mechanics of a disease and mimicking them,” Radcliffe says. “It’s so much more than that, and I think it would be very offensive to people to think you could just play a disability as if it’s like putting on a hat.”