Second Best at Riverside Studios

How different would our lives be if just one thing had changed? What if a single decision, or moment, had gone another way? Or a more terrifying thought: is it better to come so close to greatness, only to have it slip away, or to never have had the chance at all? Second Best at Riverside Studios is a comedy-drama, written by Barney Norris and directed by Michael Longhurst, that interrogates these universal questions. It tenderly unpacks the often painful relationship humans have with success and failure – twin forces that shape our lives in ways we don’t always understand but ache to make sense of.

Based on David Foenkinos’s best-selling novel, Second Best tells the story of Martin Hill who, at ten years old, was in the running to play Harry Potter, making it down to the last two candidates before, of course, losing out to Daniel Radcliffe. Now an adult, and with fatherhood on the horizon, Martin feels the profound weight of his unpreparedness for the responsibility of a new life when he barely has a grip on his own.

Sex Education star Asa Butterfield makes his stage debut in the role of Martin, delivering a performance engaging from start to finish. In this one-man play, he breathes life into every character in Martin’s world, slipping between his past and present self with blink-and-you-miss-it ease. One moment, he’s the wide-eyed child brimming with hope as the executive producer scouts him for the role of Harry; the next, he’s pulled back to the present with his pregnant wife, Sophie, at a baby scan appointment. Then, like clockwork, he’s ten again, spending a weekend at his father’s cramming in books and spells before an audition. It is Martin’s complex relationship with his father that forms the emotional backbone of the script, lending depth to his fears about stepping into fatherhood.

The play, for the most part, feels like a stand-up comedy act. Martin’s self-deprecating humour and his reflections on feeling punished growing up in the Potter-obsessed world of the 2000s land brilliantly with the audience. But catching us off-guard throughout are the hard-hitting topics of death, trauma and mental health, reminders that the real world is far from magical. “Maybe no one ever gets over anything,” Martin ruefully suggests at one point. For him, losing the role of Harry Potter wasn’t just a missed opportunity – it’s a loss he’s grown to associate with the upheavals of his childhood.

Props supervisor Will Edwards and set designer Fly Davis do an excellent job at making the stage feel like a physical projection of Martin’s mind, a fever-dream space where memories are tormenting and inescapable. The set is a clinical, white-boxed room neatly cluttered with a handful of random props that guide Martin’s movement across the stage as he visits a different anecdote each time: a flickering old TV and camera sits in one corner, a spilling rack of crisps in the other, and a hospital bed lodged horizontally on the wall opposite carrying painful weight.

Hope is not lost in this tightly packed 90-minute run. It’s a treat to watch Martin, in real time, reconcile his past with his future in a true coming-of-age fashion. Second Best is a story with real heart, its core message urging us to just trust in life’s unfolding, even if – or perhaps, especially if – we do so scared.

Ruweyda Sheik Ali
Photos: Hugo Glendinning

Second Best is at Riverside Studios from 3^rd until 22^nd February 2025. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.