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.
