New Production Of Psychodrama Equus Is A Galloping Success
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English Touring Theatre and Theatre Royal Stratford East’s co-production rides Peter Shaffer’s 1973 psychological thriller Equus at full horsepower. It’s a heady mixture of equine pagan worship and repressed sexuality straining to be unleashed, wrapped up in some rather dated psychobabble.
Psychiatrist Martin Dysart’s new case involves discovering what motivated 17-year-old Alan Strang to blind six horses in a Hampshire stable. As the overworked and unhappily married Dysart tries to ‘cure’ Alan’s pathological obsession with horses, he comes to question the value of ‘normalising’ people while taking away their passion.
It’s a compelling, challenging play, with its mythic rituals and dreamlike sequences, though it goes a bit over the top in its psychoanalytical explanations. But even if it is overwrought at times, Equus is a thrillingly theatrical experience.
Ned Bennett’s imaginatively stylised, non-naturalistic production weaves seamlessly between past and present, reality and fantasy, with some nice touches of surreal humour amidst the heavy drama. Jessica Hung Han Yun’s colourised lighting changes have an almost psychedelic effect, while the superb movement direction from Shelley Maxwell gives the scenes with actors imitating horses a raw power.
Frequently directly addressing the audience in long speeches, the excellent Zubin Varla strongly conveys Dysart’s internal conflict — his ‘professional menopause’ — as he uses maverick methods to treat his patient. And Ethan Kai is convincingly disturbed as the angry, vulnerable Alan whose misplaced adoration leads to such terrible violence.
Equus, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, E15 1BN. Tickets £10–£32, until 23 March. (Touring to Cambridge, Bath, Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle and Guildford until 11 May.)
Last Updated 23 February 2019
