Reviewed by Marie J. Kilker
Appropriately black curtains
shroud a raised stage of bare boards lit from below and, sometimes, from a
boarded semi-circle of lights above. Thunderous sounds, neighing, whinnying
come through arches in the blackness from brown horses (men-in-body-suits) with
abstract gold-metal heads. In one of the onstage white chairs psychiatrist
Martin Dysart (Paul Whitworth, a cross between 60ish Anthony Hopkins in mien and Richard Burton vocally, with a jutting-out
salt-and-pepper beard all his own) flashes back to his agreeing to take on the
case of Alan Strang. Judge Hesther Salomon (Randy Danson, showing concern as well as
frustration) persuaded Dysart he was "the boy's last chance." He'd
blinded six horses, and no one could "handle" him. With Dysart tired
of his professional life helping maladjusted kids as well as of his
devoid-of-passion personal life, he began more interested in the why of the
blinding than whodunit. To find out, he employed what were current psychiatric
methods of interviews and encounters.
He recalls Alan (compelling Juan
Javier Cardenas,
maintaining adolescent vulnerability though obviously beyond his teens), hands
dug into sweatshirt pockets, defiantly "answering" questions by
singing commercials from TV, that his father, a printer (rightly severe Douglas
Jones), devalued
and later forbade watching. In Alan's religiously divided, devisive home,
joyless Dora Strang (Devora Millman, appropriately gray in dress and demeanor) read to him
from the Bible and myths. After taking away a "too gory" Crucifixion
picture she'd put over Alan's bed, his atheist father Frank substituted a
portrait of a horse, similar to one Alan memorably rode once at a beach. He
likened him, staring full front, to the godlike storied Equus. Later, when Alan got a weekend job
at a stable, its owner (convincing James Clarke) learned he was riding horses
secretly at midnight. He was especially close—both physically and emotionally
to Nugget (Yasin Sheikh, well controlled). Via hypnosis, Dysart tuned into a reenactment of
Alan's most thrilling ride (now a sexually charged first act finale).
When Alan finally agreed to drugs
to enable him to tell of the stable happenings, Dysart, in a questionable
relationship toward him that made him loath to "take away his
worship," gave only a placebo. That was enough. He told how he went one
evening with Jill, a free spirit unassumingly played by Jessi Blue Gormezano, to a skin flick. After he and
his father met and tried to gloss over being there, Alan and Jill went to the
stable. Agreeing to sex as natural, Alan followed Jill stripping. (Director Michael
Donald Edwards
has been careful to present the youths as innocents, also to have Jimmy
Hoskins help
choreograph tastefully the famed nudity that might otherwise shock not only
Sarasota audiences.) But when Alan proved impotent, even Jill's attempt to
persuade him that could be natural too did not convince. He blamed the horses
for seeing him, shaming him.
Though finally Dysart was able to
take away Alan's pain, he also rues destroying his passion. He envies the boy's
real sexual and emotional experience as opposed to his own bland existence. May
Equus may now affect the doctor? How?
All this makes for wonderfully
melodramatic theatre that Antonin Artaud would have loved. Is it being revived because it is a
modern classic? Or is it an opportunity to revisit the 1970s with its forays
into the crises of youth and middle age, blame-the-parents tendencies,
unaccustomed presentations of homoeroticism and on-stage violence, the
glorification of feeling? The most fascinated people I saw in Asolo's audience
were aging and retired boomers, the old/new agers who learned from theatre like
this to respond well to modernized ritual. (I note that Hair returned to a local community
theatre the night before Equus opened.) Subdued lighting and thundering sound designers Lap-Chi
Chu and Robby
McLean fully
satisfy. Clint Ramos created the effective ancient-altar-like set and, for the horses (Shane
Austin, Matt
Brown, Marcus
Denard Johnson, Troy
Lewis, Jennifer
Logue),
costumes.