London Theatre News & Reviews

The Reviews are in for Equus

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Now considered a modern masterpiece, Peter Shaffer‘s brilliantly intriguing award-winning 1973 play Equus has been revived by director Lindsay Posner for a run at Menier Chocolate Factory.

Based on a true story involving a 17-year-old boy who blinded 26 horses in a small town in northern England, the play revolves around a child psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses.

The reviews are in:

"A powerful and precise revival of Peter Shaffer’s equine psychodrama." ★★★★ (The Stage).

"Posner’s precise revival flies highest in its most intense moments of beastliness as a psychiatrist sets about ridding a teenage boy of his demons." ★★★★ (The Guardian).

"The boy, Alan Strang, is the star turn, or the star-making one: Peter Firth played him in the original production and the 1977 film and in 2007 Daniel Radcliffe, then at the height of his Harry Potter fame, took the part in the West End. Emerging talent Noah Valentine brings a wiry, fragile intensity to the role." ★★★★ (The Standard).

"Peter Shaffer's fantastical play is notorious for needling its way into the messy complexities of adolescent sexuality, showing how religion, repression and fury lead a 17-year-old boy to violently blind six horses. So it's apt that Lindsey Posner's striking staging feels as intimate as trespassing into a teenager's bedroom. The lights are dim, and bare-chested dancers are the only furniture. Soon, the Menier's small stage seems to swell, its walls struggling to contain the vastness of this young man's terrifying internal world." ★★★★ (The Independent)

"And the intimacy of Posner’s production magnifies all that, focussing Shaffer’s meaning and burning away pedantic quibbles. There’s little in the way of set, the actors sit in the front row of the audience when not on stage, and the horses are omnipresent, inescapable, always sitting there, blank eyed and judging." ★★★★ (Time Out).

"In the original National Theatre production, the horses that form a surrogate community for the alienated young Alan Strang were suggested via ceremonial masks and artificial hooves. Director Lindsay Posner takes a stripped-back approach here: the opening image is of Valentine’s clothed, gangly Alan nuzzling close to Ed Mitchell as “Nugget”, his favourite steed. The latter is evoked, like the other five horses, with a homoerotic sensuality: exposed torsos smeared in dirt, with black athletic shorts and bare feet." ★★★★ (The Telegraph).

"One of the reasons Equus is such a classic is that it stays with you after, it does not provide easy answers. Posner’s production leans into this, with the physical movement interpretation for the horses adding another layer of meaning and unease. It adds a bold visual twist to a familiar masterpiece. " ★★★★ (Everything Theatre).

Overall: ★★★★

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