Naked stage role for Potter star

Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe is to appear on the London stage next year, playing a stable boy who has an erotic relationship with his horses.

Richard Griffiths will co-star in the revival of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus, to open in the capital in March.

Radcliffe and Griffiths are currently shooting the fifth Harry Potter film.

The role will require Radcliffe, 17, to appear naked and symbolically blind six horses. Richard Burton and Peter Firth starred in the 1977 film version.

Firth played disturbed stable boy Alan Strang in the original London stage production and later on Broadway.

Equus will be directed by Thea Sharrock, director of the Gate fringe theatre in Notting Hill, west London.

The controversial play marks a departure for Radcliffe, whose only previous stage appearance in London was as a guest star in The Play What I Wrote, directed by Kenneth Branagh.

He recently completed filming December Boys, an independent Australian film about four orphans growing up in the 1960s.