Equus

Saturday, 12 September 2009

With little warning and no announcement, Equus simply begins; a keenly muscled half clothed figure suddenly there - centre stage, his reflection mirrored in Shaun Gurton’s glass box set design.

Putting on exaggerated boots, their heels oversized hooves, he attempts to stand, stumbling repeatedly - coltish, yet already hinting at the strength, power and beauty that this full grown horse will be ultimately admired for.

Dr Martin Dysart (William McInnes) a dissatisfied and somewhat disillusioned institutional psychiatrist is cajoled into taking the case of Alan Strang (Kahn Cittenden) as a favour to the attractive local magistrate. We are his spectator audience, glimpsing our own impression briefly under house lights, invited to view his profile of the subject - a 17 year old boy who has blinded six horses with a metal spike. So begins a suspenseful thriller by Amadeus playwright Sir Peter Shaffer, as Dysart discovers not just the motive but his own increasing fascination with the mind and passion of Alan Strang.

McInnes, solid and conventionally handsome, has an amicable charisma which grows to fill the stage and beyond, his reassuring presence warming the audience immediately to his point of view, although a later confessional divulges some disturbing dream image butchery. He subtly reveals Dysart’s questing thoughts on aspects of “normalcy” versus the imagination of the primal, and appears reflectively jealous of Strang’s idolatry fervour.

In a role recently popularized on the West End and Broadway by Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe, Chittenden suffers in comparison to his more stage experienced co-stars. Whilst McInnes can clearly be heard throughout the theatre, his projection skills vocally apparent; Chittenden’s current exposure mainly to television and film has resulted in his voice barely reaching half way to the stalls. His accent modulated quickly back to basic Australian, despite his character’s suburban south UK middleclass aspect. He seemed to fare better in his taped interview, so the actor may have simply been overwhelmed by the preview night, and the power and madness of Alan Strang could yet have the opportunity to grow as the season develops.

Vivienne Garrett as Alan’s mother was barely recognizable from her program shot, but eminently watchable, especially in her scenes with McInnes’ Dysart; her character revealing conversationally the religious element to her son’s fixation on horses, hinting at evangelical zeal and current class discontent.

The infamous nudity in Act 2 representing original sin is less shocking that when the play debuted in 1973, but still confronting, and it facilitates a breakthrough towards truth and empathy. Bravo to Chittenden and Alexandra Fisher for making us feel as if there was no one else in the room…but for the collective intake of breath of 700 audience members that night.

Director Melissa Cantwell has utilized choreographer Gavin Webber for many of the flashback scenes and the resulting movement from the chorus/ horses is sensual, full bodied and exciting, interplayed with sound designer Kingsley Reeve’s evocative aural scapes and compositions. They reverberate support for personal memories and observations, and segued through fascinating dialogue, so laden with nuggets of symbolism as to be a feast for any armchair psychiatrist.

Costumes also by set designer Gurton were nondescriptly early 70s era (though the nurse’s wimple headdress was another wink at the religious themes layered within), but a deliberate supernatural construct was the equine wire godhead that elevated and homogenized the human head wearing it.

As Dysart concludes, there is no place for Alan Strang in humanity; the devout violence that has been awaken by carnal desires incite revulsion and horror, but my god, what a play, a magnificent insight into the sacred and the profane.