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Harry Potter and the brilliant play
EQUUS
Gielgud Theatre
ABOUT 35 years ago a series of vicious mutilations of thoroughbred horses occurred in or near stud farms in the south of England.
This gruesome event sent shock waves beyond the breeders and race-goers. Was it part of a satanic ritual or the handiwork of a few twisted individuals?
In 1971, Peter Shaffer was told of a stable boy who inexplicably blinded six horses in his care. The horror gripped Shaffer.
The play, first performed at a time when psychiatrists were regarded as gods in New York and devious magicians in England, proved a sensation. Alan Strang (Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter) is a 17-year-old, dangerously disturbed adolescent brought to the psychiatric hospital where he is treated by Dr Martin Dysart (Richard Griffiths), a Freudian analyst.
With a rapidity of action set mainly inside Dysart’s consulting room the roots of Alan Strang’s uncharacteristic and devastating behaviour are tapped.
According to Shaffer, Strang “must be able to convey a rawness, an impressionability and a sensitivity” and Radcliffe delivers it very well.
The bulky and genial Richard Griffiths, whilst breaking into Strang’s dark psyche, reveals his own, showing his professional doubts and personal unease with his arid marital lot. Their duel is as riveting and brilliant as a clash of rapier and broadsword.
Thea Sharrock once again proves to be in the front rank of West End women directors. John Napier designed the original 1973 set but here the six stall horses convey almost the solemnity of a Renaissance chapel, or illustrate the Strang household riven by his mother’s fervent Christianity and father’s rationalism - but this ingenious set holds it all together.
The horses are noble indeed in Alan Strang’s eyes. All the more terrible then is his irrevocable act.
Forget the hype, the screaming St Trinian’s girls besieging the Gielgud stage door, even the homo-eroticism. Equus still makes demands on our understanding of this most inexplicable human behaviour, but provides no textbook answers or advice from a shrink.
You are on your own and that’s how it should be.
Until June 9
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