Kids in the audience of The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh get what they came for: to see Harry Potter live and in person on the stage. Daniel Radcliffe plays Billy, and there he is. He’s quite a good actor and a pretty fair limper, and is absolutely adorable in this play about an Irish family in hard times.
Director Michael Grandage has cast the show with fine actors, and Christopher Oram’s ramshackle set is just right, as is the lighting by Paule Constable. It’s a very long play, not greatly constructed, with puzzling questions unanswered, and it’s spoken in a dialect that can be hard to understand, so I don’t think it’s for kids.
In the play, Cripple Billy’s favorite pastime is to look at cows. If you want to spend two-and-a-half hours looking at Mr Radcliffe, he’s there for you.
