When the curtain rises on English Touring Theatre’s Equus, a featureless stage is revealed, surrounded by tall, white curtains.  It’s a sterile space, well-suited for the clinical examination of a mentally disturbed patient.  In one corner a figure lies huddled, as if hiding from some torment.  When he stands up, we see that he is not an inmate of this psychiatric unit, but the psychiatrist himself.  Just who is going to be examined here? This is the first of director Ned Bennett’s inventive touches in this fresh, intelligent version of Equus. Later there is clever use of ritualised movement, striking lighting effects, and a powerful sound design, all of which combine together with some excellent performances to create a gripping, thought-provoking show.

Shaffer’s plays frequently exploit the dramatic possibilities presented when someone who is socially acceptable, perhaps even downright ordinary, encounters someone whose behaviour is strange, unconventional, or even savage. Shaffer seems to argue that our modern existence is seriously deficient in something that can now be found only in the outer fringes of human behaviour. In The Royal Hunt Of The Sun, the Spanish conquistador Pizzaro has a crisis of faith when he encounters the mysterious Inca man-god Atahualpa, and in Amadeus, the stolidly reliable court musician Salieri has to recognise that his compositions are feeble in comparison to those created by the childishly misbehaving, scatological genius called Mozart.

Equus also centres on the juxtaposition of two very contrasting characters, one ‘civilised’, the other ‘insane’. Highly respectable psychiatrist Martin Dysart finds himself treating Alan Strang, a teenager who adores horses, yet who has blinded six of them with a metal spike. Ethan Kai is mesmerising as Alan, a tortured soul who is initially very reluctant to speak of his strange and disturbing private life. This brave performance succeeds in evincing sympathy and understanding for a character whose behaviour is deeply repugnant. The focus is upon Alan’s vulnerability, rather than his criminality. His first line of defence when questioned by Dysart is to chant the jingles from television ads, but eventually he engages in a kind of ‘truth or dare’ game with him, and their sparring reveals much about both of them. Strang’s crime is shocking, but Dysart comes to envy him for having the intensity and passion that is lacking in his own life. Above all, Dysart appears to be jealous of Alan’s capacity for worship. Zubin Varla’s performance as Dysart is restrained and introspective. We see a disappointed, self-lacerating man who suspects that the therapy with which he will treat Alan will condemn the boy to a shrivelled, mundane life, like his own. Hesther, his magistrate friend, dismisses this notion as rather extreme; Dysart sharply replies, ‘The extremity is the point’.

In Equus, restrained, rational conduct comes off as second best to instinctive, unrestrained behaviour, as represented by Alan’s intense, wild worship of horses.  It’s an exciting idea, but does it wash? Shaffer can certainly be accused of over-egging his argument.  As the play’s chief representative of ‘ordinary’ life Dysart is lumbered not only with standard middle-age angst, but he and his (unseen) wife are almost comically ill-matched, and their childlessness is explained by him having ‘the lowest sperm count ever recorded’.  The dullness of Dysart’s life is echoed in the stifling respectability of Alan’s equally mis-matched parents.  His father is a stiffly formal old-fashioned socialist whose atheism jars with his wife’s belief in God and the devil.  Robert Fitch and Syreeta Kumar give sympathetic portrayals of this well-intentioned, bemused couple. A particularly moving moment comes when Dora Strang confesses that she only knows that once there was her little boy, Alan, ‘and then the devil came’.  A third marriage that is far from ideal is that of Jill Mason’s parents.  Jill is the stable girl whose friendship with Alan precipitates his horrifyingly violent behaviour. We learn that Jill’s father abruptly left his wife, who is now a man-hater who will not allow boyfriends into the house.  So ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships get a bit of a hammering in this play.  Why?

In answer to that question, this production suggests that Dysart’s frustration with the mundanity of his life, and Alan’s passion for horses, are both metaphors for forbidden sexuality. This is exemplified in the portrayal of Alan’s relationship with Nugget, his favourite horse.  Nugget is played with extraordinary physicality by Ira Mandela Siobhan, without any prosthetics.  His movements may be wonderfully equine, but he is undeniably a man, stripped to the waist.  There is an inescapable homo-erotic charge in Alan’s caressing of Nugget’s long neck and well-muscled flanks.  Dan Rebellato writes in the programme that it is time that we acknowledged that Equus is ‘a profoundly queer play about the political complexities of forbidden desire.’  He argues this point well, and so does this production, but I’m not sure that I buy into this entirely.

Repressed homosexuality is certainly a supportable explanation for Alan’s behaviour, but Dysart remains a problem.  His frustrations do not seem to be so much sexual, as professional and cultural.  As a psychiatrist he is painfully aware that he is ‘stabbing in the dark’, for other people’s minds are ultimately unknowable. As a man, he loathes modern life, with its shallow materialism and its cosy, respectable domesticity. However, his claim that he wishes to go back to some kind of pre-Christian pagan existence is less than convincing.  When he claims that there is nothing worse you can do to another person than to ‘take away their worship’, for ‘without worship, we shrink’. I’m not at all sure what he, or Shaffer, means. As the play progresses, we see more and more of Alan’s personality revealed; in contrast, Dysart’s character is relatively monotone and ultimately a little tedious. I’m with Hesther, when she berates him for being self-pityingly silly. As played by Ruth Lass, Hesther brings a welcome no-nonsense sensibility and personal warmth to contrast with Dysart’s seemingly bottomless self-hatred. Another down-to-earth character is Jill, the stable girl, played winningly by Norah Lopez Holden.  I last saw her in English Touring Theatre’s co-production with the Tobacco Factory of Othello as a refreshingly feisty Desdemona. She brings the same kind of innocent, open-hearted quality to this performance. Her attempted seduction of Alan is played with endearing charm.

In the climactic final scene of the play the horses are blinded, and so are we, by a battery of eyeball-searing white lights.  It’s a typically clever of production that is full of such effective moments.  This exciting revival of Equus brings an intriguing new perspective to this forty-six-years-old play. It is well-worth seeing, not least for Ethan Kai’s spellbinding performance as Alan Strang, which will stay in my memory for a long time.   ★★★★☆   Mike Whitton     3^rd April 2019