Life is as much about near misses as it is about direct hits. The ball that nearly crosses the line, the love of your life that was late for a date and you went home alone. Second Best is the story of how a young boy so nearly landed the role of Harry Potter and how this close brush with superstardom cast a shadow over him well into adulthood.

 

Asa Butterfield of Sex Education and Hugo fame and in his first stage role, plays Martin, now in his twenties but in his plain black jacket and spectacles and still boyish despite a small beard you can still see a hint of potential Potter in him. He is alone on the stage throughout the 80 interval-free minutes so it is quite a challenge but one he rises to.

 

Slowly but surely he tells his story, tracking back from meeting his future wife and having their first baby to being spotted by the Potter producer who thought he might just be the boy he was looking for. Butterfield is slight but has presence, whether doing a bad dance to some George Michael or just standing alone in the middle of the all-white stage set.

 

The story is told with understandable emotion as he recalls his parents' separation or his father's cancer or how he had to shuttle on the Eurostar to split his time between his dad in the UK and his mum in Paris. Small details leave their trace. He used to keep all the tin foil his father wrapped around the tuna sandwich that he had for his journey. 

 

But it is the story of missing out on the role that went to Daniel Ratcliffe that still haunts him. To the extent that at one point his mental health could no longer cope. Onstage Butterfield climbs into a bed mounted halfway up a wall as he recalls being in a hôpital psychiatrique - where even the initials of the institution seemed to be taunting him.

 

As he contemplates becoming a parent he wonders how he will cope. So much of his past feels unresolved. Will he be up to the task as a father or will he be second best again? A touching moment towards the end gives him hope, but will he ever be able to shake off his history.

 

While the piece is fictional, written by Barney Norris, based on David Foenkinos’ novel and directed by Michael Longhurst, Butterfield presumably draws on his own history as a child actor. He was very much not second best when he was spotted and cast in the lead role in The Boy In The Striped Pajamas even though he had never acted before. How would Butterfield have responded had he got that close but not been cast? 

 

Second Best is described as a playful yet poignant new comedy, but the laughs are relatively thin on the ground. There is as much sadness as humour, probably more. A section where he visits a Potter theme park in an attempt to exorcise his demons has as much pathos as hilarity.

 

Butterfield was recently on The Graham Norton Show with Michael McIntyre where he compared his role to stand-up, but apart from the fact that it is a solo performance it isn't really in the stand-up ball park at all. He is an impressive, instinctive actor though, slipping nimbly into other roles and accents as he tells his story.

 

He only really engages with the audience in a comic way towards the end when he points a camera into the stalls and wonders who else here has had near misses, suggesting the universality of his experience. It's a funny moment - and comically awkward if you are singled out on the modest TV screen onstage – but as Inside No 9's Stage/Fright joked about only last week in their show, multi-media has become something of an overused trope in theatre. 

 

But this is a minor quibble. Butterfield is very good in the role after a slightly tentative start. It is ironic that one of the first words he says onstage is "butterflies" as his character talks about being nervous. If Butterfield had any butterflies he didn't show them.