Word: strangely
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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 of nightmares at night. And it is this world that Dysart tries to break into, albeit through a variety of psychiatric techniques...
...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 boy one of us, why not leave him in his own world...
...Strang's crime has to do with horses--he blinds six of them for no immediately apparent reason, passion is a misplaced religious feeling for horses as all-seeing gods that developed out of his father's refusal to let him ride a horse when a child and his mother's proselityzing fervor (or so the play simplistically postulates). And the ritual that surrounds this passion plumbs to the depths of the unconscious mind: of sexuality, aggressiveness, bestiality, and the need to explain this world through some from of myth...
...characters. When he first appears on the stage he stares at Dysart, confused and questioning. And he doesn't quite seem to get this accusing look that Dysart later claims he puts on to say, "I have my passion... What's yours?" Not that this is inconsistent with Alan Strang's character. It seems more appropriate that he always be questioning and that this "accusing glare" Dysart reads into his eyes be more a reflection of Dysart's own inadequacies...
WHAT IS FINALLY the most mysterious of all things in Equus--Alan need not be as opaque as he is at the end, but that serves the action and suspense--is what people want for Alan Strang. His mother wants him to be happy and religious, his father wants him to improve his character, his girlfriend just wants him to be able to toss in the hay with her, the magistrate wants him to be without pain, and Dysart wants him to retain his passion--or at least toys with the idea. And it is in Dysart that this desire...