London Theater Journal: Daniel Radcliffe as Cripple Billy

Johan Persson Pat Shortt, left, and Daniel Radcliffe in “The Cripple of Inishmaan.”

LONDON â€" Everybody in the village thinks it’s a hoot that the lad known as Cripple Billy dreams of becoming a movie star. Even his doting aunts agree that any girl who would consider kissing Billy would have to be both blind and backward. They regularly go through fond but ruthless checklists of what makes their nephew so unprepossessing, which includes not just his gnarled body but his face, his eyes and his personality.

It says much about the spell cast by Michael Grandage’s revival of “The Cripple of Inishmaa,” which opened recently at the Noel Coward Theater, that these inventories provoke no self-conscious laughter in the audience, the kind that says, “Ho ho, we know better, don’t we?” Never mind that Inishmaan’s least likely candidate for movie stardom is played by Daniel Radcliffe, the star of one of the most successful franchises in film history.

Mr. Radcliffe, who became famous became playing the little wizard who could in the “Harry Potter” series, makes his entrance in this fetching production of Martin McDonagh’s dark 1997 comedy to the sound of no applause whatsoever. This is partly because London theatergoers do not share their New York equivalents’ habit of thunderously greeting anyone onstage whose name appears regularly in boldface.

But it’s ! also because Mr. Radcliffe blends right into the scenery and the ensemble. Billy is technically an anomaly in Inishmaan, by virtue of his physical deformity. But on this barren rural island, where being bored is the dominant pastime, he’s part of the same old landscape of familiar, irritating people.

Only when Mr. Radcliffe turns the blue laser of his gaze directly on the audience, as Billy contemplates his terminally limited lot in life, do we detect an uncommon intensity. But that look, when you think about it, is just a more naked expression of what all the characters in this play feel.

That would be the sense that they are trapped and thwarted to the point of suffocation. Billy may be the title character of “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” but finally he’s nothing special. Mr. Radcliffe, having appeared on Broadway in the spotlighted roles of a psychically maimed teenager in “Equus” and a singing corporate ladder climber in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” delivers his finest stage performance to date as a grotesque who fades into the crowd.

“Inishmaan” is the third - and for me, the most satisfying â€" production from the newly formed Michael Grandage Company, a troupe notable for its illustrious leading players. (Mr. Grandage previously had a flourishing reign as the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse here.) Earlier offerings were a revival of Peter Nichols’s “Privates on Parade,” starring Simon Russell Beale, and the premiere of John Logan’s “Peter and Alice,” with Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw. Still to come: Jude Law in “Henry V.”

Mr. Grandage’s interpretations of “Privates” and “Peter and Alice,” though enjoyable enough, underlined both plays’ more sc! hematic e! lements. In contrast, “Inishmaan” feels completely organic. Designed by Christopher Oram, Mr. Grandage’s frequent collaborator, the show has a heightened picturesqueness that is equally cozy and bleak, echoed in Alex Baranowski’s lonely penny-whistle music.

Johan Persson Daniel Radcliffe in “The Cripple of Inishmaan.”

If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit corny, you’re not wrong. With its oh-so-quaint rustic characters, “Inishmaan” has the highest twee factor of any play by Mr. McDonagh, whose works for stage (“The Lieutenant of Inishmore”) and screen (“Seven Psychopaths”) are notorious for their violence and body counts. But make no mistake: “Inishmaan” has its own sharp teeth, rather like a ferret that seems adorable until you get up in its cute little face.

Achieving the right tone in performing this work isn’t easy. The 1998 New York premiere of “Inishmaan” was too precious by half, and it wasn’t until I saw Garry Hynes’s straightforward staging, for the Druid and Atlantic Theater Companies a decade later, that I began to think more fondly of it. My affection has only deepened with Mr. Grandage’s version, which unobtrusively melds the play’s sentimental and snarling sides.

Like most of Mr. McDonagh’s Irish settings, Inishmaan is such an uneventful place that the most humdrum gossip inflates into big, distorted news.! So when ! the word spreads that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is shooting a film in nearby Inishmore, the excitement is unprecedented. (“Inishmaan” was inspired by the making of Flaherty’s 1934 movie “Man of Aran.”)

It’s a surprise when the gnarled Billy, who spends most of his free time staring at cows, makes the pilgrimage to Inishmore. Even more astonishing: Billy is taken to Hollywood to become a film (pronounced in two syllables) actor. Or so rumor has it.

Most of “Inishmaan” is devoted to the passing, amplification and dissection of rumors, which include such hot topics as the mysterious simultaneous disappearances of a goose and a cat. The chief dispenser of gossip is Johnnypateenmike (Pat Shortt, looking like a yokel from a Cruikshank illustration), who may or may not know the real story behind the death of Billy’s parents, who were drowned shortly after he was born.

Mr. McDonagh has a peerless gift for locting the mythologizing in small-town tittle-tattle, and the liturgical cadences in repeated phrases and actions. He also has a zesty relish for switchback narratives that keep changing directions on you. As a creator of rural gossips, seeking to enliven the monotony of their days, he is the grandest, most diabolical gossip of them all.

Each member of the ensemble here embodies this shared storytelling spirit with vivid defining differences, without overselling the surface eccentricities. Ingrid Craigie and Gillian Hanna as Billy’s storekeeping aunts â€" whose worries about their nephew drives one of them into talking to a pet stone - are pretty much perfect. But so are Sarah Greene as the rowdy, egg-smashing object of Billy’s affections, and Padraic Delaney as a quiet widower with a violent streak.

Mr. Radcliffe’s Billy fits into this company so naturally that it’s only at the end that you recognize what he’s accomplished. With his tortured walk, in which every step is an effort! , and exp! ression of gentle desperation, Billy is Inishmaan incarnate, a place where life is a strenuous, tedious, hope-busting chore that turns people into small-time monsters.

They’re all freaks in Inishmaan. What human being isn’t, if you look closely enough? Mr. McDonagh’s awareness of this sad, funny fact of life is what makes his portraits of the bored so fascinating. Mr. Radcliffe grasps that perception with sensitivity and firmness. His performance is remarkable precisely because you realize that his character is not.