"Equus"; Peter Shaffer's hot box of crazies!

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.

"FELA!"

I saw “Fela!” the other night and I was just blown away by the spirit, music and all-around joy that this new musical ignited in me. The vividness in which the life and times of Fela Anaikulapo Kuti, Nigerian musician and political dissident are created by choreographer Bill T. Jones on stage at the tiny 37 Arts theater is more then astounding. It’s almost a miracle. I’ve seen plenty of musical bios before (“Will Rodgers Follies” anyone), but never one that has matched the intensity of exuberance of life and mixed with such despair with the world at large.

The genius of Bill T. Jones is that this mixture is never jarring or forced. He goes from the wild and frenetic hip swiveling sexuality of ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’ (replete with having the entire audience participate in the hip swiveling) to the mournful ‘Sorrow Tears and Blood’ sung by the ethereal figure of his mother before she is brutally murdered by a regime intent on keeping a tight grip on power.

After the contribution that Jones made to help make “Spring Awakening” a success, he has complete artistic control with “Fela!” and boy, does he score. Other then perhaps some slow sections in the second half (I’m convinced everything can lose 15 minutes), “Fela!” moves like a Japanese bullet train. As with “Passing Strange” and “In the Height’s” both on Broadway last year, seeing different artists willing to try musical theater as an avenue for their craft, I finally am beginning to think that musicals can adjust to the 21st century.

"Beast"

“Beast”
By Michael Weller at the New York Theater Workshop, is a very strange, disconcerting, extremely disturbing, play. In fact its subtitle is ‘A Fever Dream in Six Scenes’ and that’s what it feels like. (No I didn’t fall asleep, but at times I was drifting.) Two army buddies just back from the war in Iraq and not only badly maimed, (together they one right arm and one left arm) but also severely disfigured, travel around the country on some quest to make sense of the America they were fighting for. The fact that one of them is probably dead doesn’t seem to stop them from getting into some unusual situations, like an encounter with two blind prostitutes or an epiphany at the base of Mt. Rushmore where the stone heads of the presidents talk to them. This all leads to a very funny climax in Crawford, Texas and a private meeting (against his will) with GW.

I can’t say I liked this much, but given what I have seen recently at NYTW, at least it’s a play worth seeing and talking about. Logan Marshall-Grant as one of the physically maimed vets was almost unrecognizable from the last time I saw him in Kevin Kline’s version “King Lear” and Dan Butlar was priceless as our Head Cheerleader in Chief.

"A Tale of Two Cities" Best of the year, but which year?

In the exposition-laden, opening first 30 minutes or so of the new musical “A Tale on Two Cities”, one line jumped out at me, and that’s when Lucy (our heroine) gets this bit of news: ‘Lucy, after seventeen years your father’s been found in France. And he’s alive!’ My first thought was well thank god, if he had been found dead that would have been a pretty rotten corpse. Lucy and her small coterie of guardians then travel from London to Paris where there’s lots more exposition. Downtrodden peasants, mean condescending aristocrats and those in the middle with a conscience but no ability to affect change. It’s a rather dizzying array of those Dickens characters with either colorful or funny names. Also on display are a great number of wigs to help us delineate who’s who. (The hair and costume budget alone would have fed those peasants for at least a year)

Now don’t get me wrong. As I was watching “A Tale of Two Cities”, I kept thinking that this was perhaps ‘the best new musical of the year.’ But, but unfortunately the year is 1985. Just imagine if it had come out then; Goodbye “Big River”, hello “Tale…”. All the trappings of a great musical are there. Big story, big themes, great sets, loud bombastic music with singers demanding you to PAY ATTENTION. In 1987 “Les Misérables” did just that and so much better. I know, I know this was a different revolution by a different author, but frankly for me one French peasant in the later 1700’s is very much like another in the early 1800’s. I’m shallow that way. Even the first act in “Tale…” ends the same way as “Les Miz”, with its anthem of strength and solidarity in numbers and the whole cast on stage yelling, screaming, and exhorting us to march along with HISTORY. In “Les Miz” it’s “One More Day”, here it’s “Until Tomorrow”. At Musical Mondays at Splash, patrons jump on their bar stools waving their drinks and tee shirts to sing with “Les Miz.”. Somehow I don’t see the same patrons wanting to shout along again. (Bar stool jumping is usually reserved for only special moments, maybe once or twice a night, like Idina Menzel wailing “Defying Gravity”,)

There is nothing terribly bad about “Tale…”. It is just so, so retro. Certainly there have been worse shows based on famous books. (“Copperfield”, Jekyll and Hyde” etc.) And as I said, if it had opened before “Les Miz.” who knows?

I try not to comment too much on acting, since I think I look at the whole show more than its parts, but I couldn’t help notice Katherine McGrath as Lucy’s steadfast guardian Miss Pross. Here was a role that cried out for Mary Stout, but I guess she was still incapacitated by her run-in with a hot dog cart; instead we got a very weak version of Barbara Bryne. OH, How I miss having her in the show. As Sydney Carton, the hero of the play, James Barbour seems to have taken the concept of louche and runs with it. Sometimes he is so laid-back that he can’t stand up straight. I get that Sydney is a drunk; boy do I get it, but come on James, drink from the cup of Mandy Patinkin and give us a little pizzazz. I will grant his singing was terrific and I especially liked his “I Don’t Recall” number in the first act. (Of course I also liked it in “The Happy Time” when it was called “I Don’t Remember You” or “Sometimes A Day Goes By” from “Woman Of the Year” or even Maltby and Shire’s “I Don’t Remember Christmas”.) And by the end, he was very moving, culminating with his “far, far better thing I do” speech. I only wish the other actors had reached his level.

Overall I have to say that “A Tale of Two Cities” really felt like the kind of show that had been running for decades and the producers decided to spiff it up with a new cast, refurbished costumes and sets and a new sound system. Everyone in New York has already seen it when it first opened and the ‘why Patti Cohenour lost to Leilani Jones in the best supporting actress category (there was no best actress category that year) and why didn’t Howard McGillan win for best actor debates’ have long since receded in memory.

My newest boy (and I do mean boy) friend.

I know he's young, and perhaps a little too scruffy and thinks he straight, but give him a good haircut and a shave and you have the makings of a hot man-child.  Of course I'll have to wait a few years until the baby and marriage thing has played out, but by that time he'll be ready for New York and I want to be the first to welcome him here.  There will always be the nay sayers who'll scoff, but that's because there're jealous.  Well at the end of the first month I'll turn him free, because I'm that kind of guy.