Equus

by Peter Shaffer

seen at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford on 9 May 2019

Ned Bennett directs Ethan Kai as teenager Alan Strang and Zubin Varla as psychologist Martin Dysart in this English Touring Theatre revival of the celebrated play from 1973 examining the motivations prompting a teenager to blind six horse in a stable where he worked at weekends (based on a real case, but not a documentary reconstruction of it).

Shaffer uses the brutal details of the story to explore notions of normality, religious fervour, sexual repression and the role of psychiatry in the modern world. While the revelations of Alan's state of mind provide spectacular drama, the long introspective speeches of the psychologist who is asked by the magistrate Hesther Salomon (Ruth Lass) to interview the boy form the crux of Shaffer's critique - Dysart is disillusioned with his personal life and uneasily aware of the deadening effect of psychological intervention on vulnerable people. He proceeds to encourage Alan to act out the events of his attack on the horses and o reveal 'all of the truth' of his thoughts, even as he is aware that it will puncture his religious obsessions and replace them with - nothing.

The success of a production depends not only on the skill of the two main actors, but also on the depiction of the horses as a power to be reckoned with in Alan's inner consciousness. The original production, and the 2007 revival starring Daniel Radlciffe (with Richard Griffiths as Dysart) used special hoof-like shoes and metallic horse-head masks to produce an eerie and dangerously powerful effect. Here, Ned Bennett and Shellwy Maxwell as movement director have devised a different but still compelling approach, in which the horses adopt a characteristic stance pivoted at the waist, allowing the actor's torso to be imagined s a horse's neck, or as its body, as required, while the animal sounds are created by the amplified breathing of the actor. The sensual, erotic encounters between Alan and the animals are thus heightened, especially in the scenes with the horse Nuggett (an excellent Ira Mandela Siobhan). The same actors double as the other human characters in the play. This means that Robert Fitch as Alan's father Frank Strang, conveys an intriguing visual correspondence, as he holds himself stiffly from the waist. In the horse this is entirely natural; in the man it speaks of total unease with the body, matching his oppressive attitudes to his wife's religion and his son's enthusiasms. At the same time Zubin Varla invests Dysart with various bodily twitches and facial tics which eerily resemble a horse's nervous responses to threat, giving a further disquieting unity to the institutional 'outside' world and the world of Alan's imagination.

This was a powerful production very well acted and designed. A large group of teenagers in the audience, evidently studying the play, were completely absorbed in the performance, which is always a good indication of success, as it would be all too easy for such an inherently critical audience to be merely distracted by the dramatic effects if they were not convincing.