Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It\u2019s quite the irony that many people will be drawn to Second Best at Hammersmith\u2019s Riverside Studios by the presence of Asa Butterfield, famous for Netflix\u2019s 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.\u00a0As 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\u2019s hit books. His failure to land the part has coloured his life ever since \u2014 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\u2019s play, based on the novel by French author David Foenkinos, nimbly intertwines pain and humour, examining the fickleness of fame, life\u2019s sliding doors moments, the failures \u2014 real or imagined \u2014 that haunt us all. Who doesn\u2019t nurse a grievance or sense of shame about something in childhood? Who isn\u2019t touched by loss, regret or rejection?\u00a0 Who hasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0Michael Longhurst, directing, and Fly Davis, designing, inject a little wizardry of their own. Davis\u2019s white cube of a set, dotted with key objects from Martin\u2019s 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 \u2014 a physical symbol of Martin\u2019s isolation in a psychiatric ward during a breakdown. It\u2019s as if we\u2019re 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.\u00a0Butterfield, 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\u2019s often very droll \u2014 his account of flirting, clumsily, when he first meets Sophie is all too relatable \u2014 but he also brings a touching vulnerability to the part.\u00a0Not 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.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606To February 22, riversidestudios.co.uk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It\u2019s quite the irony that many people will be drawn to Second Best at Hammersmith\u2019s Riverside Studios by the presence of Asa Butterfield, famous for Netflix\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-193126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193128,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193126\/revisions\/193128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}