Peter Shaffer's Equus is an incredibly challenging play in which sex, religion, morality, family, society, psychology and the law collide with dramatic fury. The playwright imbues his work with a spectacular opportunity for high theatrics, recommended only for daring ensembles that might pull them off with style and power. The state's flagship regional theater, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, has never staged Equus, and the only local effort of note in recent memory is ACT 1's 2005 mounting, which met with mixed results.
So I am pleased to report that KB Productions' new Equus is damn near masterful, guided with honesty, care and intelligence by director Clay Hillwig. During a brief interview Saturday night, Hillwig claimed the production owed its success to its actors. They are marvelous, to be sure, but someone has to steer the team of players through this tempestuous and meaningful drama, and Hillwig extracts wonderful performances from every player in every scene.
The story is well-known to theater audiences. A young British man, 17-year-old Alan Strang, goes wild one night and blinds a stableful of horses. Since the courts aren't sure what to do with him, a magistrate asks psychiatrist Martin Dysart if he'll find out what ails the lad. So begins a halting, difficult process of analysis by which we learn of Alan's family background, meet his parents, and become acquainted with his affection for horses, a fact that makes understanding his peculiar crime all the more perplexing.
Dysart, a rather jaded fellow, cynical about his job and trapped in a dull marriage, embraces Alan's case, and together they begin an often contentious point-counterpoint regimen of personal discovery. Eventually, some good explanations emerge regarding Alan's psychosexual obsessions, with the story's biggest flashback moments transpiring darkly, in the torturous presence of the five horses the young man will maim.
Hillwig is right about his actors: They are remarkably good. But they've also been well cast. Michael Roark's quietly studied Dysart displays some fine, edgy humor, but is even better as he doggedly pursues the truth about his patient. Anthony Just and Trish Crist are haunting as the stoic but emotionally shut-down Strang parents, with Crist especially capturing the forlorn reality of her character's repression and religious rigidity.
Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva makes for an entertainingly articulate and peppery magistrate. Further support comes from Andrew Strong as the stressed-out stable owner Dalton and Jill Braddock-Watson as a feisty hospital nurse.
Hilary Morris is exemplary as the tartish, irreverent young lady Jill, who becomes Alan's temptress and the catalyst for the horrors provoked by his fragile sexual longing.
Daniel DeVault is Alan. He spends a fair amount of stage time either in passive seclusion or confounding Dysart by repeating obnoxious advertising slogans. But when he comes to life, his actions drive the play with purpose and command rapt attention. His scenes with the horses are vibrant and at times electrically charged, including Act 1's pulsating and orgasmic conclusion astride his favorite steed, Nugget, and the violent, climactic Act 2 outburst at the stables.
The horses — portrayed with elegance under the choreography of Elaine Husted — are Reischa Feuerbacher, Christen Heilman, Paula Kay, Marly Richardson and Matthew Robert C. Laird (who also created the evocative horse heads).
The play also features a bold nude sex scene between DeVault and Morris. Like all else in this moving spectacle, it is handled seriously and artfully.
