In this play by Peter Shaffer, a young man’s mind warps God, horses, religion and its studies into a twisted mush that makes his actions totally extreme. “Equus” is a story that deals with the struggle of opposites: good and evil; rational and irrational. [As published in West Palm Beach Magazine]
“Equus,” a play written by British playwright Peter Shaffer in 1973, has turned out to become a modern classic and one of the greatest works of drama. This two-act play first premiered in London and was subsequently staged on Broadway, where it garnered a successful run.
Now playing at Palm Beach Dramaworks in downtown West Palm Beach, “Equus” is a powerful play, and considered to be one of Shaffer’s best works. He is widely known as the author of “Amadeus,” his other most famous piece, which gives a fictionalized account of the lives of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri.
In “Equus,” Shaffer depicts a psychiatrist’s fascination with a disturbed teenager’s mythopoeic obsession with horses. But this drama is much more than that. It is a story that deals with the struggle of opposites: good and evil; rational and irrational [Alan]; romantic and non-romantic [Alan/Jill; Alan/Nugget]; and religious and atheist [mother/father]. It works always on these two levels, and the audience is looking at the different perspectives through the individuals’ filters or points of view.
Equus refers to a horse. And yet it is not a global term we associate with horses. Equus is actually the name used by the 17-year old protagonist, Alan Strang [Steven Maier], whose story is based on a factual event that took place in the late 1960s about a young man in the southern part of England that had a pathological fascination with horses, and blinded six horses in a stable with a metal spike. Read more