Perhaps, like Martin in reverse, Asa Butterfield is exploring the parallel life he might have lived if he hadn’t been cast in his first screen part aged eight, or worked with Martin Scorsese.
And maybe there’s a failed actor in the audience tonight who is triggered by seeing the person he came second best to for Hugo, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or Ender’s Game on stage.
Asa Butterfield plays Martin in Barney Norris’ Second Best. (Image: Hugo Glendinning) But as Barney Norris’s taut, bittersweet monologue – adapted from the novel by David Foenkinos – unfolds, it becomes clear Martin’s issue isn’t just the painful brutality of the audition process, but its dovetailing with family upheaval.
Martin’s Harry Potter predicament may be the ultimate Millennial angst, but questions of how to survive early grief and crushing failure, jostle alongside notions of what a successful life looks like.
It’s intriguing that Butterfield chose to go it alone for his debut stage role, and on Fly Davis’ doorless, clinical, white box set there’s literally no escape.
Around the walls are Martin’s trigger points, a foil-wrapped baked potato, a film camera, a hospital bed, scattered bags of crisps, and the scan of the baby he and his wife are.
Imminent fatherhood is the catalyst for anxiety attacks, spooling back to when ‘he who must not be named’ pipped Martin to the part – followed by a childhood trying to avoid mention of Harry Potter, parental breakup, and psychological breakdown.
Later there’s a chance meeting with Daniel Radcliffe that touches on the downside of fame – a theme that could do with expansion.
Butterfield is a lithe physical presence and charismatic storyteller, capturing the neurotic Museum worker’s vulnerability, brain-ticking anxiety, and mordant humour.
Jamie Lloyd might have fed half his dialogue through a camera to capture some of his screen wattage, but Michael Longhurst is mercifully more spare with the technology.
However there’s a moment when a director asks child Martin to do different line readings to camera that rings absolutely true, and another when he turns the camcorder on the audience. Both are made to count.
Let’s hope this clearly talented 27-year-old enjoys his stage outing enough to consider more.
Second Best runs at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith until February 22.
