Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It’s quite the irony that many people will be drawn to Second Best at Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios by the presence of Asa Butterfield, famous for Netflix’s Sex Education and, before that, a successful child actor. In this funny, poignant monologue by Barney Norris, Butterfield plays Martin, a (fictitious) man deeply scarred by having just missed out on fame. As a 10-year-old, Martin tells us, he was down to the last two contenders to play Harry Potter in the film adaptation of JK Rowling’s hit books. His failure to land the part has coloured his life ever since — and now, on the brink of becoming a dad, it all comes tumbling out. At the three-month scan he falls off his chair and is concussed, upstaging his partner, Sophie, and their unborn baby and, as far as he is concerned, fluffing another huge moment in his life. Cue a tumble through his past as he comes to terms with the way grief, family break-up and loss are caught up with that pivotal childhood moment.Norris’s play, based on the novel by French author David Foenkinos, nimbly intertwines pain and humour, examining the fickleness of fame, life’s sliding doors moments, the failures — real or imagined — that haunt us all. Who doesn’t nurse a grievance or sense of shame about something in childhood? Who isn’t touched by loss, regret or rejection? Who hasn’t felt not good enough? The play also shares some themes with the Harry Potter books: the death of a parent; the desire to be special. Michael Longhurst, directing, and Fly Davis, designing, inject a little wizardry of their own. Davis’s white cube of a set, dotted with key objects from Martin’s life, touches on his job at the Louvre art gallery. Longhurst sends Butterfield clambering around this space, fiddling with a video camera, humping a wardrobe around, climbing up to a hospital bed suspended high above the stage — a physical symbol of Martin’s isolation in a psychiatric ward during a breakdown. It’s as if we’re scrambling through his memories with him. It injects energy and movement into the show, but it also introduces gentle comedy that helps temper the intensity. Butterfield, meanwhile, is anything but second best. In this, his stage debut, he has great charisma and an easy rapport with the audience, pitching his character deftly on the border between hapless and ridiculous. He’s often very droll — his account of flirting, clumsily, when he first meets Sophie is all too relatable — but he also brings a touching vulnerability to the part. Not everything here hits the mark: Sophie, for instance, comes over as too much of a saint. The ending feels a little sentimental and not quite up to the scale of the issues raised. But this is a wise, thoughtful piece that contemplates what it really means to come first.★★★★☆To February 22, riversidestudios.co.uk
