You might not know it from watching him play a boy wizard in the seemingly endless Harry Potter film franchise, but Daniel Radcliffe has grown into his own as an actor.

Short and well-built as a jockey, Radcliffe makes a strong impression as Alan Strang, the young man who mysteriously blinds six horses in a barn with a knife. Richard Griffiths, also from the "Harry Potter" series, is his shrink, Dr. Dysart, who gets to the bottom of Alan’s pain.

What must not get lost in the cloud of hype is the real news, which is that Radcliffe, despite limited experience in live theater, turns out to be a stage actor of extraordinary presence, generosity, and power. He's the real thing.

Despite his almost total lack of stage experience - seven years of Potter in his magic kingdom suggest Shirley Temple rather than Laurence Olivier - Radcliffe, with his luminously intense eyes and fragile but wiry body, looks wonderfully right as Alan, the 17-year-old British boy besotted by everything equine.

His acting, beautifully understated and withdrawn, has just the right manner for this horribly mixed-up adolescent, at the prey of a wayward religiosity and a twisted sexuality cemented together with suburban hypocrisy.

The young actor's voice is strong, and Radcliffe doesn't shrink from the physicality of the part. That includes doffing all his clothes during the play's climactic moments. But then, he literally throws himself into the role in a production chock full of startling, imaginative theatrics.

The younger actor evinces Alan's shield of precocity and hostility, then movingly reveals the tender wounds beneath it. Griffiths' stringent Dysart defies the sentimentality woven into the heavier passages, enhancing the production's authority and dignity.

For most theatergoers, the immediate subject of interest for this production -- which has been imported here after a hit London run -- will be how Daniel Radcliffe fares in his theatrical debut. The answer is, well enough. Playing Alan Strang, the tormented 17-year-old who commits the horrific crime of blinding six horses, the young actor displays a confident physical presence -- all too necessary, considering the length of his Act 2 nude scene -- and intensity. But he doesn't quite manage to fully plumb the disturbed depths of the character, as Peter Firth did so brilliantly in the original production and 1977 film version.

Like many beloved film actors Mr. Radcliffe has an air of heightened ordinariness, of the everyday lad who snags your attention with an extra, possibly dangerous gleam of intensity. That extra dimension has always been concentrated in Mr. Radcliffe’s Alsatian-blue gaze, very handy for glaring down otherworldly ghouls if you’re Harry Potter. Or if you’re Alan Strang, for blocking and enticing frightened grown-ups who both do and do not want to understand why you act as you do.