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Equus is the dramatization of a psychologically damaged young man, Alan, who, for no known reason, blinded six horses with a hoof pick at the stables he worked at. The action takes place after the event in the hospital which the courts have remanded Alan, and while the crime is central to the play, the play revolves around the character of the psychiatrist, Dysart, who is tasked with 'curing' the boy.

Those who have a wider background in such things are probably well aware of this play--it won a Tony Award in 1975 for best play and best direction, and there was also a film adaptation in 1977--but I knew nothing about it before picking it up on a whim at some discard sale; the back cover description sounded interesting and I keep an eye out for unusual dramatic works. And I found it quite engaging and cleverly handled, for the most part, without any of the falseness or staginess that I find in a lot of drama when it's printed out in book form. The stage presentation is available on YouTube, and I plan on watching it soon, but I can well imagine that this would be powerful to see acted out. And, despite the unusual methods and stage direction, I never had any problem following the action.

The element that resonated with me most was the doctor's dilemma. At a point in the play, he questions his role as a healer, and whether it is better to allow dangerous but unique individuals alone or attempt to convert them into a safe, conforming members of society. Actually, the doctor is thrown into a much wider gulf of self-doubt during his treatment of Alan, and the reader/viewer could find several other themes as well that the author is holding up for us to examine while psychiatrist and patient interact.

Until the resolution of the play in its final scenes, the narrative engages one like a detective story might--what was the motivation behind this crime? But it's the end where the play stumbles, I think, though I'm not sure if the author could have provided us with any conclusion that would be satisfying. It's like a horror film that conceals the monster until the end, but when we see it, all we see is a guy in a rubber suit. The themes and ideas that Schaffer presents us with up until the end are provocative and engaging and I don't know that there are really answers to them, and the implied cause-and-effect solution that's revealed in the end seems too pat to me. Perhaps it wouldn't have been, though, in this time and place.

This is one of the few instances though where the let-down I felt at the end of the narrative didn't completely destroy my enjoyment of the build-up. This play has many unusual stage directions, and I thought they were surprisingly inventive and deft, and, as I mentioned before, the dialogue as a rule realistic and believable. And one could say that by concentrating on the resolution to the boy's story, when all along it is really about the doctor's existential crisis is missing the point, and I would agree, but unfortunately the two are intertwined, and I felt that the one impinged on the other. Still quite worthwhile to look into though, and I look forward to watching a stage presentation soon.

Review ends here.

To Be or Not To Be dept.

I'm continually asking myself, when I read something that is meant for the stage, if I'm actually 'experiencing' the thing at all. The question doesn't come up for me as much when I reading Shakespeare, or the ancient Greeks, but nearly every other dramatic work I read rather than see on stage makes me wonder if I've bought a sack lunch from McDonald's, and then sat in the Red Lobster parking lot to eat it. The meta-question might be, 'Who cares?', or 'Why is this something you're worried about?' 'Worried about' is probably pushing it, but I do wonder about it occasionally. I wonder less when I read something like Equus, which I felt was inventive and captured genuine speech patters, more though when I read something that sounds dreadfully melodramatic on paper, like much of Tennessee Williams does to me. Perhaps these things need to be seen to be believed.

Does the reverse hold true at all? If someone has seen but not read Hamlet, is that a complete experience? No one wonders if a film adaptation is necessary to complete a novel, but if you've seen Mel Gibson's version, have you experienced enough 'Hamlet-ness' for it to be genuine? Branagh's version of Henry V is pretty good--I doubt I'd have been as involved in a dry reading of the script (although 'We happy few...' is always going to sound good.)

I probably think about this question most when dramatic works are included in the various lists of things one needs to read to be well-read/before they turn 50/ before they die, etc. [Space added for complaints about people who follow lists too much] Yes, I know all the reasons why these lists are ridiculous, but in a world where it has become mandatory to self-educate oneself if one wants to be exposed to the broadest spectrum of ideas, these kind of lists can at least function as a springboard. With novels, the enterprise seems to me to be completed in the reader's head; with a play, there doesn't really seem to be a way to capture the thing-in-itself, as even a live performance is still dependent on the actors' expertise in their roles--though that does seem to me to be the closest that we can get.

In the end, it's more of a thought-experiment than a real question, and moot as well, since I'm only going to have the opportunity to experience a tiny fraction of these works on a live stage compared to the few I'll get around to reading--it's probably far easier to find a production of Cats than Coriolanus, for instance, unless you're rather diligent, or live in a place that has a strong theatrical tradition. I'm not much for either, so it's probably YouTube and chill for me.