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Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.
Equus ~~ Peter Shaffer



I first read Peter Shaffer's Equus in high school. I gave a book report on it my junior year, and was not allowed to give book reports in front of the class the rest of the semester. I found Equus to be brilliant piece of theatre then, and thru the years, my admiration of Equus has only grown with repeated readings. The subject matter is both fascinating and disturbing.

I’ve seen several productions of Equus ~~ none of them good ~~ mostly due to the production’s director not trusting his source material, or because the director was too afraid of the themes and nudity to explore them fully.



Sadly, when Daniel Radcliffe starred in a staging of Equus back in 2007, the press and public were obsessed with the fact that Harry Potter would be naked on stage. Equus is about much more than a horse and a naked, disturbed, young man, Alan Strang, on stage for three hours. It’s unfortunate that this was completely missed ~~ a victim of Pottermania.

At the center of Equus is not Alan Strang, but rather Doctor Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist. Most of Equus is told in a series of flashbacks; Dysart’s job here is to unravel the mystery as to why Alan, committed an incomprehensible act of violence against six prized horses and to dissect Alan’s mind along the way.

One great thing about being in the adjustment business: you’re never short of customers. The world keeps sending Dysart customers ~~ the children he’s come to see as being damaged by that world, because it judges them as damaging to it. One more dented little face. One more adolescent freak. The usual unusual. .



Religion is the foundation of Equus ~~ Dysart’s fascination with the primitive rites of ancient Greece, his revulsion at the Christian deity of the modern world; then there is Alan’s mother, Dora Strang’s Christian faith and tutoring of her son against the wishes of her equally devout atheist husband. Gods exert their powerful pull as mortals continually recreate them.

But it’s passion that’s the real heart of Equus ~~ buried and beating in Alan, exposed and dying in Dysart. Experience, suffering, desire ~~ all the spiritual essence, conventional and secular religious forms that inhibit and incite passions in their different ways. Alan has swallowed and rejected both his mother’s faith and his father’s lack of faith.

From all this, and from vivid, dreamlike, childhood memories, Alan has created his own vital, ritualistic worship of his secret God, Equus ~~ kneeling to the picture of a horse framed above his bed; slowly brushing the horses in the stables; secretly taking night-time rides on them. Riding is a worship to be offered raw, and alone under the darkness of night, ~~ human and animal both naked.



As Dysart probes more deeply, Alan is cured. But that cure is presented as a spiritual death, with Alan lying flat under a blanket while Dysart addresses a farewell speech to him. Throughout the play, Dysart questions not only his ability to cure the boy, but his right to cure him, to take away his pain. The more efficient the cure, the more he doubts his right. By the end of Equus the focus has moved entirely away from Alan to Dysart, who is now imprisoned by his vision of the God, Equus. Like Alan, Dysart now stands, open in the dark with a pick in my hand striking at my heads! There is now in my mouth, the sharp chain. And it never comes out. That chain is the dictates of normality. He is left with no choice but to do whatever he is supposed to do as a psychiatrist. My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband, a caring citizen, a worshiper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost! Finally he strips Alan of what he himself so desires in the boy.

In the end, Dysart robs Alan of his pain, passion and worship, he also destroys Alan’s spiritual life; the awakening of Dysart's own pain and his self-realization send a clear message ~~ in the world of normality, in the modern age of science and technology ~~ dominated by the rational man ~~ society is interested only in making its deviance conform to its norms. To preserve itself, it cuts the soul out of the body, eliminating passion and worship, and leaving a mechanized being whose only purpose is societal usefulness.