NEW YORK — Even horses need to rehearse. Especially those played by humans.
It's 30 minutes before the audience begins filing into the Broadhurst Theatre for a Tuesday evening performance of "Equus." Actors in street clothes pace and leap across the stage. In the center of all the activity stands Daniel Radcliffe, wearing jeans and a number 10 Eli Manning New York Giants jersey. He, too, is in constant motion.
The performers' movements are under the watchful eye of Spencer Liff, dance captain for the Broadway revival of Peter Shaffer's play about a young man (portrayed by Radcliffe) who blinds six horses, and a psychiatrist (Richard Griffiths) who wants to find out why.
It's a group warm-up after a day off for Radcliffe and the young men who portray the horses and who, during the show, wear masks made of tubular aluminum and high, platform hoofs.
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Liff will not be going on tonight as one of the steeds. Instead, he will be observing the performance along with the paying customers. Understudy Kevin Boseman will take Liff's place. And the 23-year-old Liff will be giving notes on the movement, just as if "Equus" were a musical and he was critiquing the dancing.
The performer should know. He's a Broadway dance baby: He toured in "The Will Rogers Follies" at age 6 and made his Broadway debut at 9 in "Big." He has also danced in such recent musicals as "The Wedding Singer" and "Cry-Baby," as well as in the films "Across the Universe" and "Hairspray."
"I definitely think that what we do on stage is not dancing," Liff continues. "But I still hold the job as dance captain, which is normal for a musical to have, because we do have six guys on stage. We need to be together. We need to stay tight. And we need rehearsals, just as dancers do.
"We've developed a different way of staying together," he adds, explaining that in musicals "you normally have 'counts' to a song. In this, we use lines and certain word cues and visuals (for the counts). We listen to each other to make sure that we're all stamping at the same time and moving at the same time."
The movement was devised by Fin Walker, who also worked on the London production of the show, which also starred Radcliffe and Griffiths. But the rest of the cast, many with modern-dance backgrounds, is new, hired for New York.
But not many dancers have to wear heavy masks or those high shoes, which weight 6 pounds each, that serve as hoofs. When rehearsals started last August, a lot of time was spent getting used to the shoes.
"We put them on the very first day and we were all kind of like Bambi learning to walk," Liff recalls.
The six horse performers wear skull caps, almost like wrestling helmets, inside the horse heads, which weigh 3 pounds. The caps strap down in front of their mouths and the bottom side of their chins.
"It's pretty close to what a horse bit would be, other than going into your mouth," Liff says.
"It really does give you a sense of being a horse because you can't see a lot in front of you, and what you can see is through steel bars. Horses see out of the sides of their heads. And that's a lot of what our vision is."
