I originally saw “Equus” on Broadway in the spring of 1975 when I had just moved to New York City. The same week I also went downtown to the Public Theater to see for the first of my 14 times, “A Chorus Line”. For a young man from a small town in southern Illinois(Carbondale), these shows were the avatar of theater. How could it get any better?
What I remember most about “Equus” was not only its seemingly simplistic staging and stylized horses but also the grand acting of such theater stalwarts as Frances Sternhagen and Marian Seldes. I also developed a crush on the actor playing Alan Strang, Peter Firth. (He must have been a lot older than I thought, because watching him now on BBC-America’s “MI5”, he looks older than Anthony Hopkins, his Dr. Dysart, does today.) At the time I found both “A Chorus Line” and “Equus” to be absolutely thrilling theater, but what I didn’t grasp at the time was how similar thematically they were. Both plays are rooted in the mid 70’s ethos of societal group norms versus freedom for the individual.
Regarding “Equus", I knew it was a crazy psycho-sexual drama, but I didn’t realize the extant that it was a homo-psycho-sexual play bordering on homophobia. (Maybe not even bordering, but deep in the terrain of queer self-loathing.) I’m sure everyone who saw it could never forget Alan symbolically masturbating on his favorite horse Nugget, played by the beautifully equine Everett McGill. “Equus”, the play, had some weird sexual attitudes, but John Dexter’s direction was breathtaking.
After a year or so, the play ran its course and would have closed if the producers had not put in Anthony Perkins as the lead. (Opposite another crush of mine, Keith McDermott.) Talk about your ‘hot box of crazy’! I mean, here was a man who was so fucked up sexually, that he made Montgomery Clift look positively ordinary. Too old to play Alan Strang, Perkins played the self-doubting shrink Martin Dysart! No wonder the critics went wild with this peculiar role reversal. The show lasted another two years, even moving from the Plymouth to the now demolished original Helen Hayes Theater.
I saw the show again there from a stage seat, but it was with Richard Burton, and I don’t remember much other than being enthralled watching the ‘great man himself’ up close. Since that time, “Equus” seemed to have faded into the maw of theatrical history with only a great logo
“to remind me of my first heady theater experiences. (Well that and the recent revival of “A Chorus Line”.)This of course brings me to the new revival of “Equus” which I saw in London last year. At that time I was a little nervous about seeing it again, since I had heard that the play itself was being viewed as a ‘period piece’ and starring Daniel Radcliffe, who had never acted on stage before in a very complex part. (Shades of Julia Roberts!) I mean his bio says that he did a walk-on in “Stones in my Pocket” but as himself! Also the thought of watching a 17-year-old walking around ‘nakid’ made me feel just a little pervy.
Well all that trepidation was allayed when both Radcliffe as Alan Strang and Richard Griffiths as Dr. Martin Dysart walked on stage (in a new set design by the man who did the original, John Napier), and I realized they were both in complete control of the play.
”Equus” is of course the story of a young man, who after tending horses at a local stable, goes bonkers one night and blinds them with a spike. This includes his favorite horse, Nugget. The reasons, the aftermath and the effect of this heinous crime form the basis of the play, not just the way they impact the young man and his family, but also the psychiatrist who is assigned to ‘help’ him.
As a consequence of Radcliffe’s youth and intensity, the play shifts its focus, and Dysart becomes almost secondary. Radcliffe's Alan is angry, despairing, shamed and deeply guilt-ridden. I really wondered how this boy could survive if he faces the unspeakable horrors of his crime. What’s really infuriating about Dysart is that he speaks a lot of psychobabble mumbo jumbo about conformity verses intense passions without ever realizing the deep-seated root of Alan’s despair. Not once does Dysart consider the homosexual panic of a young man raised in a repressive religious environment.
To their credit, both the director Thea Sharrock and Radcliffe do emphasize the effect homophobia has on a young psyche almost in spite of Shaffer’s text. Alan’s masturbatory ride with Nugget is so homoerotic that I almost had to turn away. This is also where Radcliffe, being only seventeen when I saw him, really scores big time. He was still just a post-pubescent young man, completely unaware of his body and the hormones racing through it. A good deal of the time he’s either in a state on undress or completely nude. It seemed to me that neither Strang nor Radcliffe are even conscience of their own inherent sexuality. This is why the melding of character and actor is so powerful.
What Radcliffe does know is that Alan is very, very attracted to the masculine and strong figure of the horses. In London, the virile dancer Will Kemp played Nugget, and the other five horses were almost as Adonic. Rather than the melodramatic meeting of Alan and his father at a porno theater that the plot suggests is part of his breakdown, Sharrock implies the perceived lack of maleness of his father is what provokes his outrage. This then invokes strong homosexual feelings in him, combined with his lust for the picture of Jesus originally over his bed, that it has to be destroyed. Thus the beautiful horses are blinded so they don’t see his unnatural love.
This contemporary rendition of “Equus” is what makes Alan Strang the central character rather than Martin Dysart. I thought that Daniel Radcliffe was amazing for someone so young who had never been on stage before. But even more surprising was that Peter Shaffer’s play after 35 years had such resonance and the power to provoke such strong emotions. Though written for a different era and with a lot of out-dated psychiatric notions, the play still works on so many other levels. That’s the sign of a true classic.
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