Equus - Review

Menier Chocolate Factory, London

*****

Written by Peter Shaffer

Directed by Lindsay Posner

Toby Stephens and Noah Valentine

Lindsay Posner is back in the saddle at the Menier Chocolate Factory, jockeying his cast of thoroughbreds into a stunning interpretation of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 classic.

Teenager Alan Strang (Noah Valentine) has just been committed to a psychiatric hospital after having blinded six horses at the stables where he worked. Dr Martin Dysart (Toby Stephens) is the psychiatrist tasked with unlocking the young man’s deeply damaged mind, with Shaffer’s drama offering a brilliantly structured analysis of the challenges the doctor faces.

Onstage throughout, Stephens is sensational, gradually peeling away Strange’s defences to reveal his vulnerable core that led to such a horrific attack. Not only does Dysart unravel the teenagers traumatic life, such is Shaffer’s genius that he is also forced to face his own flaws too.

Stephens may be a sensation but he is well matched by the youthful Valentine a comparative newcomer to the London stage. In a story that revolves around flawed parenting, sexual frustrations and mixed attitudes to Christianity, it is no wonder that young Strang finds solace in the company of horses. Valentine is straining at the bit as he charts his most complex character’s arc with a graphic and brave brilliance. As a double act, Stephens and Valentine offer one of the best pairings in town.

The supporting cast are all given full rein to deploy their skill, notably Colin Mace and Emma Cunniffe as Alan’s bewildered parents who nurse troubled histories of their own. Bella Aubin - another relative newcomer - puts in fine work as Jill, the stable girl attracted to Alan.

It is however the ensemble of six performers, all trained in dance and who depict the horses, that offer some of the evening’s most powerful visuals. Moses Ward and Ed Mitchell do most of the heavy lifting in carrying their riders around the stage, but their stablemates of Luke Hodkinson, Aristide Lyons, Zack Parkin and Tommi Sutton have all been brilliantly cast for their sublime strength and movement. Credit too to Movement Director (or should that be Trainer?), choreographer James Cousins, who has groomed this talented sextet into mimes of equine beauty. Paul Farnsworth’s designs and Paul Pyant’s lighting only enhance Posner’s stylish direction.

After this Menier run, the production canters down the M4 for a brief stabling at its co-producers, the Theatre Royal Bath. Expect to see it galloping into the West End soon!

Runs until 4th July, then at Theatre Royal Bath from 14th - 25th July

Photo credit Manuel Harlan

Equus - Review

Trafalgar Studios, London

***

Written by Peter Shaffer

Directed by Ned Bennett

Ira Mandela Siobhan and Ethan Kai

Equus remains a fascinating, if dated, piece of writing from Peter Schaffer. Exploring the psycho-sexual complexities of the adolescent Alan Strang, a boy who has just, horrifically, blinded six horses, Shaffer contexts the young man’s mental turmoil against the emotional and sexual failings of his psychiatrist Richard Dysart.

Done well, the play should offer a well crafted glimpse into teenage angst, parental frailties together with the numbing realities of mid-life disappointment. In Ned Bennett's production however, that arrives at the Trafalgar Studios from the Theatre Royal Stratford East, a strange fusion of magnificence and mediocrity permeates the evening.

Ethan Kai plays the troubled Strang and while he may appear perhaps a little too old to portray his teenage character, his performance nonetheless convinces. Kai captures Strang’s awkward dysfunctionality - a boy who is more at ease with horses than with people - delivering a performance of intensity and energy.

Opposite Kai is Zubin Varla’s Dysart in a turn that fails to deliver the gravitas that the role demands. Varla is unable to carry us along with his revelations of the demons that surround his infertility and failing marriage. On stage virtually throughout, in what is unquestionably a demanding role Varla’s work is of a standard that is little more than “average” and for Shaffer’s prose that’s just not good enough. 

The supporting roles are likewise workmanlike in their execution. With the exception of Norah Lopez-Holden’s Jill, Strang’s peer who befriends him, all the other characters prove too tedious as they flesh out Strang’s back story, making the 2hr 40min piece seem even longer.

To their credit however, and with the exception of Varla and Kai, all the cast double up in their portrayal of the horses that Strang is to ultimately mutilate and under Shelley Maxwell’s movement direction, their equine interpretations are sensational. The immaculately sculpted Ira Mandela Siobhan plays Nugget, the “lead” horse in the stables in a masterclass of physical theatre. Maxwell delivers genius in her suggestions of the horses’ movement, that her company deliver immaculately.

Runs until 7th September

Photo credit: The Other Richard