Equine Delight

EQUUS IS dangerous dramatic territory. Its harsh terrain overflows with traps--gaping, bottomless craters of existentialism, sexual repression, and religious angst--into which the ambitious but uncautious director can easily tumble, desperately waving his arms and kicking his feet in vain as he cries "Why didn't I do Guys and Dolls?" That a non-professional would dare to take on Equus is commendable; it displays courage, or at least, self-confidence. That a non-professional director can create an intelligent and profoundly affecting rendition of Equus is remarkable; it displays unique talent.

Michael Pillinger shows no fear--and, more important, no ineptitude--in this outstanding production. With enormous skill and grace, he confronts Peter Shaffer's challenging play--a work full of sound and fury, signifying everything from spiritual impotence to the decline of Western culture to the terrifying Question of Human Existence. Shaffer adds to these staggering themes theatrical devices like cross-cutting, long soliloquies, nudity, and the presence of strange, ingeniously-stylized man-horses. Equus is as uncompromising with its audience as it is with its cast and crew. Shaffer keeps you on your toes, enthralled and yearning. He demands involvement and total suspension of disbelief. He doesn't allow you merely to watch, as though you were sitting, nearly anesthitized, in front of your TV, murmuring jingles. Shaffer's out to drain you, to wipe you out, to leave you limp with exhaustion--yet glowing with an odd exhilaration when the lights go up. Fully recognizing the playwright's aims Pillinger uses quicksilver pacing and gives Equus a visceral energy particularly consuming within the intimate confines of the Dunster House dining hall.

The actors, indeed, seem confined as most of the action takes place on a black platform surrounded by wooden railing and decorated only with three hard benches. The platform mostly serves as the stable where 17-year-old Alan Strang blinded six horses and as the claustrophobic office of Dr. Martin Dysart, the psychiatrist who must "cure" Alan. The performers move in a seemingly eternal sunset--the muted orange glow of Dan Scherlis' and Alexis Layton's gorgeous lighting design--dissolving only when we venture into Alan's tortured memory, where he relives his psychotic pains and pleasures in an evilly beautiful indigo haze.

Dysart guides us through the circuitous caverns of Alan's consciousness and unconsciousness, where bizarre images casting terrible shadows ricochet off the walls of his mind, slowly settling to form the horror he cannot confront. The struggle between Dysart and Alan (and their private bouts with their respective neuroses and psychoses) is at the core of Equus, giving the drama its chess-match tension as two fierce wills clash and two magnificent intellects trick and torment the vulnerable souls possessing them. Sadism and compassion feed on each other as Dysart and Alan peer, with frightening perception, into one another's heart of darkness, at once attracted and repelled by what they see.

AS THE PLAY opens, Dysart is an emotional void, a man whose powerful intelligence has numbed him to his painful existence. A dry, analytical shrink, his self-obsession reaches gargantuan proportions. Given to endless Dostoyevskian musings about his place in the Universe, Dysart recognizes the shallowness of his life, but refuses to deal with it--instead, tossing off witty, erudite quips about his plight. His ability to diagnose and categorize all his quirks and impulses merely intensifies his self-loathing. He realizes his compulsion to play God, to tackle the illnesses of his patients so that he can absorb their agony, thus setting them free and, in turn, reassuring himself, giving him a sense of necessity and power to compensate for sexual and spiritual infertility.

Onstage nearly every minute of the play, James Goldstien wrestles relentlessly with the role of Dysart. When he has a firm grasp on Dysart, Goldstien is very fine indeed, but when he loses confidence, his performance slips into woeful mediocrity. For much of the play, his stiff gestures and forced, dramatic delivery remove all naturalness from his performance, making him look like someone trying toact. When he addresses the audience--as he does frequently--Goldstien fidgets, never quite knowing what to do with his hands. He ruins some of Dysart's wittiest (and in their wry humor, extremely revealing) lines by trying too hard to sound flip and sarcastic; he sounds, instead, like Clark Gable faking a British accent. Yet, Goldstien captures some of his character's most elusive qualities; perceiving the slender line between detached interest and perverse fascination, he expresses well the seduction and repulsion in Dysart as he delves into Alan's psyche.

That Goldstien's talent erupts in Dysart's scenes with his patient is understandable since Jon Magaril's performance as Alan is extraordinary. In the same way that Alan draws in Dysart, Magaril mesmerizes the audience, simultaneously seductive and repulsive. Magaril makes Alan the truly compelling victim of the Modern Age: alienated, practically illiterate, addicted to television. Alan is the perfect Freudian delight (with a twist) who hates his father, loves his mother, and desperately needs something to worship, something to absolve him of his sins in this universe where "God is dead."

Magaril's evocation of Alan's rage and despair create a palpable tension in the audience. The alacrity of his mood swings--at one point he switches instantly from a curious and confused six-year-old to a wretched adolescent screaming violently at the top of his lungs--has an almost eerie effect. Likewise the solemnity and fervor in his ritual mounting of Equus, riding him until he is caught in a libidinous-religious frenzy.

AND IT IS Alan's aliveness that Dysart cannot bear, the fact that his worship of Equus gives meaning to his existence: "That boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have felt at any moment of my life...and I'm envious." Caught under Alan's spell, Dysart--who dreams of the Delphic oracle and eagles bearing prophecies--can think of nothing more monstrous than "taking away someone's worship." But, as a shrink, he is the self-proclaimed high priest of the God Normal. He must exorcise the boy's vital spirits, the phantasms of "insanity" that bring Alan a fulfillment that Normal, "the murderous God of Hell," can never understand, and therefore, can not tolerate.

In a final, striking gesture, the intrepid Pillinger proves that he realizes the seriousness of his task. Goldstien, Magaril, and the highly competent cast that supports them receive no curtain call and the effect is more profound than it first seems. Hours later, the images that linger in your mind are not of smiling actors--fellow students--but of the tortured faces of Equus' desperate souls.