Equus @ King's Theatre Edinburgh, 18 Feb 2007
Good, but could be so much better.
| 06 Mar 2008
There has been a lot of press coverage about this restaging of Peter Shaffer's unsettling play, mostly centred around the actors who have taken on the role of Alan Strang, the seventeen year old who has inexpicably blinded six horses. The role is undoubtedly challenging, demanding a large amount of commitment from those playing him. Alfie Allen acquits himself well... Well, but not brilliantly.
Equus is a powerful play. If given the emotional depth and conviction it requires it can move, shock and leave the audience questioning their approach to life. It brings horses to life as brooding, dominating presences solely through the use of actors in huge metal masks and mesmerising lighting. It should also be intimate, drawing the audience in to the very tense relationship between doctor and patient.
This production almost pulls it all off. But it never quite makes it. Much of the responsibility for this must lie with Simon Callow in the role of Martin Dysart. Dysart narrates the play; it is as much about his crisis of self-belief as it is about Alan Strang's horrific act and the reasons behind it. For all that Equus is a hugely theatrical piece, Dysart needs to provide a naturalistic centre to it all, taking the audience with him on the journey to understanding. Callow's interpretation is too stagey to allow any belief in his character's emotional engagement with his patient. Ultimately we are left neither feeling nor believing the despair and confusion with which Dysart is left at the end of the play.
Countering this is Allen's performance as Strang. All pent-up emotion and glowering threat, he does successfully unpeel the layers to show the frightened, lost boy within. But it is difficult to find the very special, startling young man he is supposed to be. The rest of the cast do what they can. Other characters are less well written, appearing mainly as ciphers to the main pairing: Alan's frustrated father and his overtly religious mother; the magistrate who brings the case to Dysart in the first place; Jill the stable girl whose sexual advances trigger Alan's cataclysmic act. These characters offer explanations, but little by way of insight.
So Equus must stand or fall on the basis of Alan Strang and Martin Dysart - and on this occasion, though they are good, they could be so much better.
Equus is a powerful play. If given the emotional depth and conviction it requires it can move, shock and leave the audience questioning their approach to life. It brings horses to life as brooding, dominating presences solely through the use of actors in huge metal masks and mesmerising lighting. It should also be intimate, drawing the audience in to the very tense relationship between doctor and patient.
This production almost pulls it all off. But it never quite makes it. Much of the responsibility for this must lie with Simon Callow in the role of Martin Dysart. Dysart narrates the play; it is as much about his crisis of self-belief as it is about Alan Strang's horrific act and the reasons behind it. For all that Equus is a hugely theatrical piece, Dysart needs to provide a naturalistic centre to it all, taking the audience with him on the journey to understanding. Callow's interpretation is too stagey to allow any belief in his character's emotional engagement with his patient. Ultimately we are left neither feeling nor believing the despair and confusion with which Dysart is left at the end of the play.
Countering this is Allen's performance as Strang. All pent-up emotion and glowering threat, he does successfully unpeel the layers to show the frightened, lost boy within. But it is difficult to find the very special, startling young man he is supposed to be. The rest of the cast do what they can. Other characters are less well written, appearing mainly as ciphers to the main pairing: Alan's frustrated father and his overtly religious mother; the magistrate who brings the case to Dysart in the first place; Jill the stable girl whose sexual advances trigger Alan's cataclysmic act. These characters offer explanations, but little by way of insight.
So Equus must stand or fall on the basis of Alan Strang and Martin Dysart - and on this occasion, though they are good, they could be so much better.
run ended