Word: equus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...EQUUS IS dangerous dramatic territory. Its harsh terrain overflows with traps--gaping, bottomless craters of existentialism, sexual repression, and religious angst--into which the ambitious but uncautious director can easily tumble, desperately waving his arms and kicking his feet in vain as he cries "Why didn't I do Guys and Dolls?" That a non-professional would dare to take on Equus is commendable; it displays courage, or at least, self-confidence. That a non-professional director can create an intelligent and profoundly affecting rendition of Equus is remarkable; it displays unique talent...
...play--a work full of sound and fury, signifying everything from spiritual impotence to the decline of Western culture to the terrifying Question of Human Existence. Shaffer adds to these staggering themes theatrical devices like cross-cutting, long soliloquies, nudity, and the presence of strange, ingeniously-stylized man-horses. Equus is as uncompromising with its audience as it is with its cast and crew. Shaffer keeps you on your toes, enthralled and yearning. He demands involvement and total suspension of disbelief. He doesn't allow you merely to watch, as though you were sitting, nearly anesthitized, in front of your...
...Alan's consciousness and unconsciousness, where bizarre images casting terrible shadows ricochet off the walls of his mind, slowly settling to form the horror he cannot confront. The struggle between Dysart and Alan (and their private bouts with their respective neuroses and psychoses) is at the core of Equus, giving the drama its chess-match tension as two fierce wills clash and two magnificent intellects trick and torment the vulnerable souls possessing them. Sadism and compassion feed on each other as Dysart and Alan peer, with frightening perception, into one another's heart of darkness, at once attracted and repelled...
...audience. The alacrity of his mood swings--at one point he switches instantly from a curious and confused six-year-old to a wretched adolescent screaming violently at the top of his lungs--has an almost eerie effect. Likewise the solemnity and fervor in his ritual mounting of Equus, riding him until he is caught in a libidinous-religious frenzy...
...Alan's aliveness that Dysart cannot bear, the fact that his worship of Equus gives meaning to his existence: "That boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt at any moment of my life...and I'm envious." Caught under Alan's spell, Dysart--who dreams of the Delphic oracle and eagles bearing prophecies--can think of nothing more monstrous than "taking away someone's worship." But, as a shrink, he is the self-proclaimed high priest of the God Normal. He must exorcise the boy's vital spirits, the phantasms of "insanity" that bring Alan...