Word: dysart
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Equus takes place in the present in Rokeby Psychiatric Hospital in Southern Egland. The child psychiatrist, Martin Dysart (Brian Bedford) is asked by the local magistrate, Heather Salomon (Sheila Smith) to take on an unusual case: a disturbed young man who was brought to her court for commiting a crime less horrible in its consequences than in its explanation, a crime that is in one sense an unspeakable mystery. Alan Strang (Dai Bradley), the boy, arrives at the hospital in a state of extreme catatonia, singing advertising jingles or watching television during the day and living in a world...
...play in this sense is not so much psychological drama--an explanation of personality or behavior--as a kind of psycho-suspense thriller with one important question: Can Dysart trace the trail of clues that lead to explaining why the boy did what he did? There's also the question of whether he will be able to cure him, and, almost a corollary to this second mystery: Does Dysart want to cure...
...DYSART MOVES about the stage as if he himself were in analysis, presenting the most disturbing case he's ever come across in his career. He's a loquacious narrator, and genuinely interested in his subject in the same way as say, the narrator in Lord Jim. The difference being that Dysart acts out his narrative--just as he has Alan Strang act out his psychosis through a form of psychodrama. And, instead of repeatedly saying "he's one of us" as the narrator says of the rejected Lord Jim, Dysart keeps asking himself, "why should I make this...
...ACTING in this show is superb throughout, from Brian Bedford's cold portrayal of the cynical Dysart to Humbert Allen Astredo's rendering of the nervous father, shuffling about, pulling his hat round in circles between his thumb and forefinger. Bedford's performance is best, although it was marred last Friday night by a great deal of spluttering and spittle in enunciation. As narrator, Dysart controls most of the ironic pitch and timbre of Equus, and Bedford brings to the role the kind of laconic understatement that's necessary for it to succeed. In the Broadway production I saw last...
...thing Equus lacks is a sense of what it is like to be mad. Firth shows us energetically enough what it looks like to be mad, but Shaffer doesn't give him a chance to tell what he feels. The boy's passion may be more intense than anything Dysart has ever known, but such a passion, attractive from the outside, may be a burden to those who have to live with it, a source of more pain than exaltation. Maybe there are some kinds of creativity that are not self-destructive and cruel. Shaffer's play, with its mixture...