“I need—more desperately than my children need me—a way of seeing in the dark. What way is this? … What dark is this? …”

‘Equus’ by Peter Shaffer is a 1975 Tony Award Winning play, which tries to make sense of the question, Why the fuck did 17 year old Alan Strang stab the shit out of six horses with a horsepick? Martin Dysart is the psychiatrist who tries to answer this question, but ends up asking even more questions about Religion, finding solace in a religion of one’s own making, the relationship between mother and son, father and son, socialism, religion versus socialism, sex, purity, sin, and the idea of Place.
And to speak on the idea of Place, Dysart does a great job of subverting the idea of setting, which then subverts the idea of character. The set has a simple introduction, “A square of wood set on a circle of wood,” but it encompasses multiple settings and multiple characters all at once. “All the cast of ‘Equus’ sits on stage the entire evening. They get up to perform their scenes, and return when they are done to their places around the set. They are witnesses, assistants—and especially a Chorus.”
I also love the literal characterization of the horses. “Any literalism which could suggest the cosy familiarity of a domestic animal—or worse, a pantomime horse—should be avoided.”
This was really fuckking good.