So Long As It Doesn't Frighten The Horses
Equus (Menier Chocolate Factory) Guest Review by Dr Terror
The film which gives me most pleasure to watch again and again is Mel Brooks' High Anxiety. It might not be the greatest film in the world artistically but it brings me such joy. It is an example of the 'Freudian Mystery' genre: why exactly is Richard H Thorndyke so scared of heights? This riffs directly off Hitchcock's Spellbound: why is Gregory Peck's character feeling so guilty? Has he perchance murdered someone? Equus is another entry in this catalogue: why exactly has teenager Alan Strang blinded a bunch of horses?
Equus was written by Peter Shaffer, twin brother of Anthony, at a time when RD Laing's 'anti-psychiatric' approach was kneeing Freudian psychoanalysis firmly in the bollocks but psychoanalysis was still a very influential paradigm. Nowadays, when we realise what a load of hokum it all was and when no one but a few Jewish New Yorkers take it seriously any more (even Woody Allen has stopped going), the danger is that a play like this can seem simply laughable...and, if I'm honest, it IS a bit. But it's no less watchable for all that.
The danger of whoever plays Martin Dysart, the psychiatrist, is to ham it up like a panto villain on speed (see Richard Burton in the film - to be fair, he was doing this a lot by this stage). Toby Stephens avoids this and brings humanity to a role which can easily lapse into caricature if done badly. He gives the play meaning and momentum.
The Menier Chocolate Factory (literally a former factory where they made Menier chocolates) is a wonderful venue, known for the bravery and boldness of its artistic choices. Among the things I've seen there are Murderer by Peter's twin, Anthony, and several incarnations of Forbidden Broadway, direct from New York. One of these ripped into Daniel Radcliffe's performance in this very play with a number called Let Me Enter Naked to the tune of Let Me Entertain You from Gypsy ('I need some hype fast, because I'm typecast'. I'm not sure he succeeded. That incarnation became known far and wide as 'the one where Harry Potter gets his magic wand out.')
Noah Valentine who plays Alan Strang here isn't straddled with the terrible burden of trying to make the audience forget that you are the star if the biggest franchise in film history (until the next one comes along). His performance is superb. Inevitably, it invites comparison with the remarkable third episode of Adolescence. In both cases the psychiatrist/clinical psychologist is trying to answer the question: why did the lad do it? It makes for utterly compelling viewing - so much so that when he wasn't on, the audience grew a bit restless.This is a marvellous production. If the material occasionally feels dated (it's the parents' fault. Well, knock me down with a feather!), the performances elevate it to the classic status it has always occupied.