Equus ☆☆☆☆
Trafalgar Studios
This is an astonishing production of Equus and several dramatic moments stay burned on your retina long after the curtain comes down. It’s a play about a terrible violent act by the central character and the possible psychological motivations and debate around whether we all are capable of such passions.
Director Ned Bennett has taken the text and presented it with fresh clarity and a truly muscular visual language. This is reflected not least by the mesmerising (and buff!) Ethan Kai, playing Alan Strang the disturbed young man who has blinded six horses and also by the casting including actors with movement in their DNA such as Ira Mandela Siobhan who plays the principle horse and whose ‘pedigree’ includes the wonderful DV8 physical theatre.
Central to this innovative show is this production dispenses with the masks of wire and leather for the horses as stipulated in the stage directions, and refreshingly uses movement and physical theatre instead. The cast portray the immense strength and power of the horses by keeping their backs straight, heads turned and arms out and forward with musculature and sinews popping under the lights.
There is a bit of nudity and a lot of semi naked male flesh and a distinct homo-erotic subtext to the boy meets horse plot yet it never over powers the piece and in terms of current LGBT theatre could be seen as quite tame (Afterglow anybody?!).
As a play there has been a fairly recent (2007) revival featuring Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe as Alan Strang. There is also a star studded film featuring Richard Burton and Peter Firth which used real horses and was subsequently criticized for losing some of its theatricality. This extraordinary ability to transport the audience into the mind of this disturbed young man and begin to believe in an equine deity is what makes Equus, and this production in particular, such a must-see play.
EQUUS by Peter Shaffer
Directed by Ned Bennett
https://trafalgarentertainment.com/shows/equus/
Until September 2nd 2019
REVIEW : JONNY WARDJonny Ward, Queerguru Contributing Editor is a drama graduate but has worked backstage for many years at venues such as The Royal Albert Hall, The 02, Southbank Centre and is currently at The National Theatre. He lives in Hoxton, London and is delighted to check out the latest, the hottest and the downright dodgy in queer culture for Queerguru. (P.S. He is currently single) @JonnyWard360
Labels: 2019, Johnny Ward, London Theatre
