Peter Shaffer's 1973 Equus is an overtly theatrical play right from the start that, at New Theater in South Florida, retains its ability to move an audience. Powering the production -- a gone-in-a-flash 2 hours and 45 minutes is the seemingly fearless performance of David Hemphill as a 17-year-old who has blinded with a hoof pick six horses at the stable where he worked weekends, and the arresting work of James Samuel Randolph as the psychiatrist who battles doubts about the concepts of healing and normalcy as he treats the teenager.
Ricky J. Martinez provides deft and sensitive direction on a stage that functions efficiently with spare yet suggestive set and props.
This is the play that caused trans-Atlantic buzz in 2007 and 2008 when Daniel Radcliffe of "Harry Potter" film fame took to the stage in London and New York to play tormented teenager Alan Strang (it rhymes with "hang"), complete with the several minutes of nudity called for in Shaffer's script as Alan plays out the attack.
The play is set in Southern England, where Martin Dysart, fan of the ancient Greeks, sees himself as "an overworked psychiatrist in a provincial hospital." He's suffering, he says, from "professional menopause" yes, there's some humor along the way.
Into this midlife crisis comes Alan, referred to him by a pragmatic but sympathetic magistrate (Linda Bernhard). The almost illiterate son of a Bible-reading mother and a father who's a self-declared atheist, Alan by this time has cobbled together a sexual-religious language based on the crucifix, work-a-day consumerism and images (live and pictorial) of horses.
The mother (Laura Turnbull) defends her husband more effectively than herself, the
father (Josh Foldy) is unapologetic but not unhelpful, the hospital nurse (Vanessa
Thompson) feels put-upon, the stable owner (Steven A. Chambers) is clueless and the
girl (Mélissa Smith) who fatefully steers Alan to the job is well-meaning.
In the process of telling Alan's story, Dysart tells his own, and he gets the first and last lines. But as we hear those first lines, the spotlight is on Alan embracingthe horse he calls Equus, his "God-slave," a/k/a Nugget (Ricardo Rodriguez). The bare-chested actor playing Nugget/Equus wears a metallic-frame cage for a "horse" head and chopine-like platform cages as "hooves" that give him added prominence. Actors who double as other horses also wear head cages, in a design decision that has been popular since the play's 1973 debut. (Such stylized props aren't dismissed lightly, and New Theater borrowed these heads and hooves from a theater group that produced Equus some years ago.)
Except for some quick costume changes, the actors remain on stage, seated on benches between their scenes. They're put to good use early on in becoming a cacophony of customers calling out for brand-name wares in Alan's hardware store.
The stage itself is set with three sculpted columns on each side; upon close look they reveal themselves to have hoof-like bases, and with their slight inward curve the columns resemble a ribcage a subtly evocative reinforcement of elements in the play.
