British actor Daniel Radcliffe's return to Broadway has been hailed a resounding success following the opening of his play The Cripple Of Inishmaan.
The Harry Potter star has embarked on his third stint on the Great White Way following successful turns in Equus and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
The Cripple Of Inishmaan opened in New York City on Sunday night following a successful run in London last year, and Radcliffe won a round of glowing reviews for his performance as a disabled Irish teenager.
Ben Brantley of the New York Times calls the play Radcliffe's "most satisfying stage work to date".
"Daniel Radcliffe, isn't here just to flex his charisma for fans ... The boy wizard in the immensely successful Harry Potter movie franchise is entirely convincing as the boy who is regarded as least likely to succeed at pretty much anything in his God-forsaken rural Irish town," Brantley wrote.
Variety's Marilyn Stasio praises Radcliffe for his "warm, sympathetic performance" while David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter adds, "The Harry Potter star has never been better, more than measuring up in this flawless ensemble."
Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune adds, "Of the three Radcliffe performances I've seen on Broadway ... this is by far is the best. It really breathes as it hobbles along, and yet it's never showy nor overly optimistic. Radcliffe, who reveals chops here I've never seen on stage nor screen, is surrounded by superb character work throughout."
Newsday's Linda Winer concludes, "Never let it be said that Daniel Radcliffe panders - not to expectations of Hollywood glitz nor, especially, to his Harry Potter fan base. Here he is, back on Broadway... and Daniel Radcliffe is again wonderful."
Radcliffe, 24, revealed earlier this year that he spent many weeks researching physical disabilities so he could be as true to life as possible in the Broadway play.
"You're on dodgy ground a little bit when you're an able-bodied actor playing a character who lives with a disability. So 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 said at the time. "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," he said.
Since Potter, Radcliffe has mixed film and stage work. He's done the horror movie The Woman In Black, the upcoming romantic comedy What If, played Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings and has just finished playing mad-scientist's assistant Igor in Max Landis's pop-culture spin on the Frankenstein story.
