Tag Archives: Equus

Review – Equus, Menier Chocolate Factory, London, 31st May 2026

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One of the most outstanding plays of the 20th century, Equus, Peter Shaffer’s intricate but vivid enactment of a true story, retains an immaculate reputation, bolstered by extraordinary productions in the past. It deals with the inexplicable blinding of several horses by a teenage boy, a story told to him by a friend who died shortly afterwards, with no first-hand knowledge of the crime or perpetrator at all; Shaffer filled the gaps with his imagination. I saw the original production, when it transferred to the Albery, as part of a school trip (!) and we sat on benches on the stage. At the time it was the most thrilling experience I’d had in a theatre and it opened my 16-year-old mind to appreciate some of the extraordinary things that theatre can achieve. I’ve seen it twice since, including the famous Daniel Radcliffe production, and it never fails to astonish. Seeing it again now in the intimate setting of the Menier Chocolate Factory was a no-brainer for me.

Long suffering psychiatrist Martin Dysart is told about the actions of 17-year-old Alan Strang by Hesther Salomon, the magistrate at his court case. With no apparent cause, and with no previous blemish on his character, Strang blinded six horses on a rampage in a stable. Hesther realises he needs help rather than just punishment, so reluctantly Dysart agrees to take him on. Initially obstructive, Strang slowly starts to open up as together they explore the reasons why he did what he did. As the play progresses, we see vignettes from his family life, his introduction to the stable and stable-mate Jill, and his instant infatuation with the horses. Shaffer saves the re-enactment of the blinding for the final scene, one of the most visually and emotionally shattering moments in 20th century drama.

One of the reasons why it’s always a thrill to see a production at the Menier is that you never quite know how the stage and seating will be configured. For Equus, Paul Farnsworth has created a black wooden stage, featureless apart from four benches in the corners, a black wooden walkway around the stage and what appears to be a centre revolve that they don’t use (looks it a bit odd, to be honest). In keeping with the original production, the offstage actors sit in vacant seats scattered around the front row of the audience, which emphasises how we’re all part of the same shared experience. Entrances are crisply made from those seats, the actors circling the edge of the stage until they walk onto it; if you’re used to stretching your legs out in the front row, you can’t do it in this show, or you’d trip everyone up.

At the back of the stage sit the horses, in their stable. Actors from a dance background, they’re motionless for much of the first act, but when they come to life, they roll, they writhe, they stagger, all with elegant choreographic grace. They create the illusion of individual horses, unless they come together when they portray Nugget, the Equus God, in whom Strang is so besotted. They exude an unpredictable strength; they’re not beautiful to watch, but they are mesmeric, eerie and unsettling. There’s no doubt that this presentation underlines the homoerotic nature of the play; it was always there, but in this production it’s beyond question.

It’s a first-rate cast who throw themselves into the production with full commitment. Colin Mace and Emma Cunniffe are excellent as Alan Strang’s parents, Frank and Dora. Both find it hard to express their feelings towards their son. Frank is a traditional man’s man who doesn’t go in for “emotions”, works long hours and refuses to allow a TV in the household, and Dora’s love for God comes first. Both give great portrayals of essentially good people who are totally bewildered by what their son has done.

Bella Aubin is superb as Jill, Alan’s confident young stable colleague, seeking to push Alan gently towards a relationship despite his internal conflict and immaturity. As Hesther Salomon, Amanda Abbington creates a palpable character out of what is really a shoulder on which Dysart can cry (and vent his spleen), advocating powerfully on behalf of Alan to protect whatever future he has. There’s also great support from Paula James as the no-nonsense nurse, David Rubin as stable owner Harry Dalton and Ed Mitchell as Nugget and the horseman.

Toby Stephens’ Martin Dysart is at the end of his tether from the start. Dysart should be embarking on a tremendous journey of self-discovery during the course of the play, reflecting on his homelife and his marriage, coping with an ever-growing workload, exasperated at himself, his very essence, his clients and the world at large. We know that Toby Stephens is a superb actor, with terrific technical skill, an imposing stage presence and the ability to conjure up all levels of emotion. However, I didn’t sense that this Dysart went on much of a journey, or that there was any significant character development. I didn’t feel his dark night of the soul, there were no penny-drop moments as he works out who he is. This is a play where all the characters should emerge at the end profoundly changed from how they were at the beginning, but for Dysart, it all felt strangely on one level. I know I’m in the minority here.

Noah Valentine, however, as Alan Strang, gives a truly great performance, riveting from the very start, combining insolence with vulnerability, aggression with passivity. Physically, it’s inspired casting; Shaffer’s only description of Alan in the stage directions is that he is a “lean boy of seventeen”, and indeed, Mr Valentine cuts a slim, slight figure, a powerful contrast with the muscular nobility of the horses. His expressions throughout are superb – you don’t need to hear this Alan speak in order to know what he’s thinking. Strang is still just a boy, and Mr Valentine truly convinces as a wayward, uncertain teenager who defaults to impudence and disobedience under pressure; and who could crack at any time. It’s a terrific performance – not to mention one of great bravery – and he will certainly be a name to follow in the future.

Admirably, there has been no attempt to update the play; the programme notes announce that the action takes place in the early 1970s, so Alan Strang’s incessant singing of television adverts is the same as it was fifty years ago. Advertising jingles today just don’t have the same iconic power!

However, there’s one directorial decision with which I completely disagree. Towards the end of the first act, Dysart encourages Alan to re-enact taking Nugget from the stable and leading him into the field. Shaffer’s stage direction states: “he mimes undressing completely in front of the horse”. However, director Lindsay Posner has Alan literally removing all his clothes, so that his final scene before the interval is performed naked. Obviously, this makes a great sudden impact, but in so doing, it detracts from the more significant final scene, the true climax of the play, where Alan is running, jumping, hurling himself about the stage naked whilst viciously jabbing the pick into the horses’ eyes.

To reinforce that final impact, Paul Pyant’s lighting design has to go full manic strobe, and effective though it is, that final scene ought not to need any additional lighting tricks to create its shock. But here it’s necessary because we already have a visual memory of Alan naked with Nugget – the surprise has already been ruined an hour earlier. Call me a purist, but when Shaffer instructed that the first undressing should be mimed, I reckon he knew what he was doing.

Overall, a committed and powerful production of an outstanding play, but somehow it didn’t quite crackle with the electric energy that I would have expected. Nevertheless, there are some superb performances, and Noah Valentine is a star of the future. After the run at the Menier ends on 4th July, the production transfers to the Theatre Royal Bath, who have co-produced it, for two weeks from 14th July.

4-starsFour They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – Equus, Theatre Royal Stratford East, 14th March 2019

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There’s something about a Latin word that gives it more clout. Like when they create some expensive new cosmetic but 50% of it is tap water, the main ingredient majestically becomes Aqua. No one says aqua! Not since 55 BC. No surprise, therefore, that a 17-year-old mentally ill, sexually confused boy with a horse hang-up would scream “Eq… Eq…Equus!” from his hospital bed rather than the more traditional “Giddy up Neddy”.

Forgive me for that disrespectful introduction, because I actually have a ton of respect for this most significant 20th century play, first performed in 1973 – and I have no doubt it would have faced the wrath of the censor ten years earlier. It’s now been given a pared-down, imagination-filled production from the English Touring Theatre, starting its national tour appropriately enough at one of the most significant theatres of 20th century drama, the Theatre Royal Stratford East. It’s been a matter of personal shame that I have reached the grand old age of [insert grand old age here] and had never been to the Theatre Royal Stratford East. So when my friend the Squire of Sidcup announced that he wanted to see some “great plays”, and I saw that Peter Shaffer’s Equus was on at that self-same theatre, it was a no-brainer.

I’m sure you know – but in case you don’t, Magistrate Hesther Salomon refers the case of Alan Strang to psychiatrist Martin Dysart as his last chance before being locked up in prison. Strang has been found guilty of blinding six horses at a riding stable; a crime that, even today, stuns the audience into silence when they first hear it. Strang is obstructive, uncommunicative, confrontational, but clearly in need of some meaning to his life; in many ways, a typical teenager. As Dysart pushes and probes into Strang’s emotions and motivations, the truth is slowly revealed of the latter’s destructive obsession with the horse god Equus. But, in comparison, Dysart also considers his own dusty, crusty existence, where he merely observes outside life taking place without having any of his own; and, although comparisons are odious, he becomes jealous of Strang’s passionate and sensual self-expression. At the end of the play, you can draw your own conclusions as to which of them has the brighter future.

This is my third exposure to the dark recesses of Alan Strang’s mind and Martin Dysart’s own personal struggles as his psychiatrist. The first time was in a school group (that’s bold) in 1976, with Colin Blakely as Dysart and Gerry Sundquist as Strang, shortly before it closed – this was the tail end of the original production, I believe. There were bench seats at the back of the stage where we all perched, uncomfortably, but I remember it as a mesmeric experience. Then Mrs Chrisparkle and I saw the celebrated 2007 production with Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe, which was probably the hottest ticket in town. However, this new production can easily hold its head up high in such prized company.

The simple, stark set adapts itself so well to represent a clinical hospital environment. Sheer white curtains drop down three sides of the stage suggesting those curtains that divide beds in a ward, but also just giving that hint of a white padded room that we associate with mental institutions. A few props, such as Strang’s hospital bed, a basic TV so loathed by his father, and an unexplained hospital trolley carrying six horses’ skulls, are all you need to fill in the gaps. The biggest and most effective prop is Jessica Hung Han Yun’s fantastic lighting design, which incorporates mysterious gloom and blood-red gore, and all moods in between. Giles Thomas’ subtle, disturbing music provides a near-constant undercurrent reflecting Dysart’s state of mind. That alone unsettles us in the audience, because it’s Strang who’s in mental torture, not Dysart, right?

Many of the actors double up their roles to represent the horses, which provides the creative team with the nice problem of how best to portray these strong, kindly equine beauties. Shaffer’s original stage directions required the actors, who wore tracksuits, to don see-through horse masks, putting them on in full view of the audience as part of a deliberate ceremonial procedure. Instead, director Ned Bennett has gone for greater realism in this production. The horse actors just wear shorts; you could consider that the equivalent of a horse’s saddle. The exposure of the strength of the actors’ limbs and torsos directly convey a more powerful impression of the unadorned strength of a horse.

Furthermore, movement director Shelley Maxwell has done an amazing job in enabling the actors to recreate a horse’s neck movements – angular but flowing, strong but vulnerable – and Ira Mandela Siobhan’s performance as Strang’s favourite horse, Nugget, physically blows your mind with its accurate suggestion of how a horse moves. He’s absolutely superb in the role. The climax scene where we see Strang’s attack on the horses also calls for incredibly expressive physical movement, with the agonising blinding of the five horses in the stable followed by Strang’s torturous, mocking, assault dance with Nugget before he too is blinded. It’s both the stuff of nightmares but also incredibly vivid and stunning to watch.

Ethan Kai gives a deeply expressive, no-holds-barred performance as the damaged Strang; initially insolent, gradually more trusting, extremely vulnerable and uncontrollably violent. It’s a brave and memorable performance. Norah Lopez Holden is also excellent as his girlfriend Jill, cheekily and excitedly suggesting a (literal) romp in the hay, and trying to smooth over the waters when it doesn’t go the way she hoped. She’s also extremely good in the hilarious scene set in the sex cinema (which ages the play somewhat). There’s excellent support from Robert Fitch as Strang’s principled-yet-hypocritical father and Syreeta Kumar as his well-meaning mother, Ruth Lass as the concerned Hesther and Keith Gilmore as the no-nonsense nurse and stable owner.

But it is Zubin Varla who stands out, as the professionally high-achieving and personally self-disappointing Dysart. We first see him, huddled in the corner of the stage. You think it’s going to be Strang, because that plays to our preconceptions of a mental health patient, but in fact it is Dysart, revealing from the start his discomfort in his own skin. Wretchedly dependent on his cigarettes, his analytical tactics may well pinpoint precisely Strang’s issues, but they also gapingly reveal his own. Constantly addressing the audience, you can hear the doubt and the essential sadness through both his voice and his body language. I’d be surprised if Dysart has ever been portrayed with greater eloquence or pain. It’s one of those performances where you can’t take your eyes off the actor; first rate throughout.

Equus plays at the Theatre Royal Stratford East until 23rd March, and then goes on to Cambridge, Bath, Bristol, The Lowry in Salford, Northern Stage in Newcastle and Guildford. If you’ve never seen the play, this is a great opportunity to witness for yourself this ground-breaking work. If you have seen it before, I doubt whether you’d ever have peered so closely into Dysart’s soul, as Mr Varla allows us to see. Stonkingly good.

P. S. The Theatre Royal, Stratford East is a little island of Victorian delight in a sea of modern shopping centre. Extremely welcoming and friendly, it has a cool vibe, good toilets, and a trendy bar supporting its beautiful, intricate Victorian interior of red and gold. We sat in the middle of row D of the stalls, and, I must confess, I now know the definition of cramped. There’s not a lot of space there! And the stage is surprisingly high, so even from row D you can only just make out the floor level. But the prices are incredibly reasonable and the atmosphere is superb, even for a Thursday matinee. Very keen to go again!

P. P. S. The Squire of Sidcup was gobsmacked with the brilliance of Equus. It’s incredibly rewarding to introduce new minds to the wonders of the theatre!