Daniel Radcliffe to Kick Up His Heels on Broadway

This time he gets to keep his clothes on – in Mad Men-era Brooks Brothers-style suits. But the big challenge: singing and dancing.

Daniel Radcliffe, who last year pranced on the Great White Way in his birthday suit for the stark drama Equus, will take the lead in a new revival of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, to open in spring 2011, its producers have announced.

By then, the Harry Potter star will be the ripe old age of 21.

The 50-year-old show, which originally starred Robert Morse (who now plays the senior ad agency owner on Mad Men) and was revived in 1995 with Matthew Broderick, concerns J. Pierrepont Finch, a fiercely ambitious young man who rises from the mailroom to the upper echelons of the World-Wide Wicket Company. He also finds love on his way up – and down – the corporate ladder.

Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella) did the classic score, which includes the standard "I Believe in You" – and which Finch sings to himself, in the executive men's room's mirror.

Will Daniel Radcliffe be Returning to Broadway?

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe got raves when he appeared on Broadway last year in Equus. There is now hope that Radcliffe might return to the New York stage in a revival of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Radcliffe took part in a reading of the show this week and, according to Broadway World, was sensational.

Writes the site’s Realto Chatter columnist: He interpreted the role in a charming, adorable and fresh way. He sang great. I think everyone was there to see if he could do it. And boy, he really did it. He was great. He came off as a full-fledged musical star. Those of us who saw him in Equus know he has the stage chops as a dramatic actor but now I can say that he could easily take Broadway by storm as a musical comedy star, too. After that final Harry Potter movie comes out, this guy can do whatever he wants in any medium. I loved him. And it seems to me that he is the youngest actor to play the role of Finch. And his youth made the show feel fresh and new. It had a new kind of innocence to contrast the cynicism of the world he is in.

Daniel Radcliffe Will Strip for Next 'Harry Potter'

Daniel Radcliffe will strip down in the new Harry Potter movie -- twice! The actor, who has previously bared it all for his part in the play Equus, will drop his clothes again for the latest flick in the series, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. Details aren't quite solidified, but it sounds like a go.

Director David Yates revealed: “Daniel has appeared nude in the past. There are a couple of scenes in the new film in which he will undress but we’re still thinking about how we present it.”

The scene occurs when Harry’s best friend and Hermione’s love interest Ron Weasley, played by Rupert Grint, is battling a monster which tries to defend itself by flashing a series of images where Harry and Hermione are kissing and embracing."

Daniel will then expose himself in a later scene following a brush with death. The director added: "There is another scene in Kings Cross station, where Harry almost dies and sees Dumbledore. In that scene he will also be naked."

Daniel, 20, has previously admitted he was surprised by how comfortable he was appearing nude on stage. He said: "It never really was an issue. I don't know why, it probably should have been. I am terribly self-conscious. Although I remember I did look at my dad once and say, 'Do you think I could wear pants?' "

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is being split into two installments, with the first due for release next year.

Meet "Equus" actor Lorenzo Pisoni, the guy Harry Potter thinks is Hot!

So this is the guy Harry Potter thinks is hot.

Meet "Equus" actor Lorenzo Pisoni, of whom Daniel Radcliffe said, "If I was gay or a female, I'd just want to marry him. He's gorgeous, and he's a really cool bloke as well."

"Honestly, I think he was trying to embarrass me," says Pisoni, who plays both horse and rider in Peter Shaffer's 1973 drama. The play stars Radcliffe, the crown prince of the Potter film franchise, as a tormented teen.

"It's crazy how it spread," Pisoni adds. "I've heard from a lot of friends I've not heard from in ages, mocking me and congratulating me on my possible nuptials."

It can't be easy trotting across a stage with a 19-year-old, 130-pound superstar on your shoulders, but somebody has to do it. And it's just as well that somebody is Pisoni, a former Cirque du Soleil ringmaster and acrobat who stands 6-foot-7 in his hooves.

"My father's a clown - literally, a clown," the 31-year-old said the other day, over a heaping bowl of pasta ("We horses are the Michael Phelpses of Broadway").

As the son of the founders of San Francisco's Pickle Family Circus, Pisoni started doing "bits" at age 2, when he wandered out onstage with a beat-up top hat, toy bowling pins and a suitcase.

He was in good company: Bill Irwin was a Pickle person too, becoming young Lorenzo's unofficial godfather. Years later, Irwin helped Pisoni land a manager in New York. He acted as "comedy consultant" to Matthew Broderick and David Arquette, whom he taught "the basics of tripping."

Given all the fancy footwork Pisoni has to do in "Equus" - on a moving stage, no less, in an aluminum mask and 7-inch metal "hooves" - he has worked hard on not tripping, especially when Radcliffe, his heels dug into stirrups around Pisoni's waist, is on his back.

"The other night, Dan got his foot stuck in my harness, and my instinct to hold his leg was probably not the wisest thing," Pisoni says, ruefully.

"With people seated on the stage, we couldn't say anything, but he tapped my back, like, 'Let go of me,' and his message came through loud and clear . . .

"He's fantastic," Pisoni adds. "Very sharp, well-read and with a wicked sense of humor. [The show] is not about him, it's about us."

That said, he adds, "I don't want to be known as the guy who dropped Harry Potter."

(Article from the New York Post)