Here is an exquisite piece of theatre, if you receive my meaning.
Not the sleek steed of stallion fantasy or the sculptured mane and nostril flare of colt cult, rather the non svelte draft horse, the clip clopping Clydesdale is presented as that obscure object of desire in BROCKMAN’s production of Peter Shaffer’s EQUUS.
Award winning lighting wiz, BROCKMAN directs this gripping exploration of passion, fetishisation, ritual, religion and repression through the prism of fatness and the price of normality.
After 17 year old Alan Strang blinds six horses, magistrate Hesther Salomom tasks psychologist Martin Dysart with finding out the motive for the mutilation. As Dysart digs deeper into Alan’s fractured inner world, he is drawn into a mind shaped by raw sexuality, religious fervour, and equestrian fixation.
EQUUS is a play in which the characters are all in need of love, a veritable stable of intertwined relationships. All the pieces of the play interlock snugly, without strain, with a steely, splendid Swiss movement precision.
As written and presented, it is mesmerising and moving, a sophisticated script examining the spiritual and the corporeal, and the ensemble cast take the bit between their collective teeth.
Ryan Yeates is superb as the adolescent Alan addled by angst, emotional equilibrium imbalanced by notions of equitation and the jangle of advertising jingle and the chant of chinkle-chankle..
Jay-James Moody is marvellous as Martin Dysart, cardigan clad, cuddly soft bodied couch counsellor confronting his own suffocating comfortability in professional and personal life.
Sophie Gregg as Alan’s mum, Dora, devout Christian who believes that Alan is possessed of the devil, resolutely plays in defiant, quiet contrast to Gus Murray’s Frank, Alan’s dad, committed atheist, a proletarian printer at odds with his partner’s parenting.
Stephen Madsen doubles as a nurse and stable owner, Cloud Fernandez-Montoya, portrays Jill, the buoyant girl enticing Alan into a hesitant hetero-normative experience and Linda Nicholls-Gidley is simply magisterial as the magistrate, Hesther.
Eschewing traditional representation of equine iconography, Shalamah Tautaiolefue is extraordinary as Nugget, that obese object of desire, fleshy fetish in leather hood and draped loincloth.
Set & Lighting Design by BROCKMAN is suitably lighting-centric, simple and amazing and totally satisfying on all levels; scenically, aesthetically and symbolically, brilliantly complimented by Dr Emily Brayshaw’s costume design.
This season is playing at KXT on Broadway || 181 Broadway, Ultimo
