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dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i love plays. i love works of fiction that feel above my comprehension. i love plays that feel above my comprehension.
beautifully disturbing, in that ‘young person just has something twisted about them’ way. a play that mixes religious fervour with sexual identity? sign me up. peter shaffer says in his foreword that ‘rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. publishing a play is a reversal of the process.’ this could not be more true of equus - though i don’t think the written play suffers. i came away from this with the very strong desire to see it in person, which i may be able to do later this year, fortuitously. i may have to settle for watching the film, perhaps, because i feel like this play is something that needs to be experienced.
anything that rattles you has done its job, for me. i love getting rattled by things. i understand it is ultimately about the rise of consumerism, materialism, secularism and the modern person’s inability to find organic passion in the world, but i specifically found the theme of the sublimation of desire (=worship?) to be the most interesting. alan finds his connection to equus inexplicable and full of fervour. this play is very perverse. i can only imagine how much more shocking it would have been when it was published in 1973, because it still shocks people 52 years later. it is truly fantastical, in that the entire thing is borne of a boy’s sick fantasy, and that it is expertly crafted.
shaffer attempts to make sense of what seems to be a senseless crime. he tries to link a boy’s loneliness and detachment from society to his madness.alan ‘creates’ his god, because the christianity his mother teaches him is discouraged by his father. he wants something to give himself wholly over to. drysart seems himself in the boy, or at least it sparks doubt in him about his own life and position in the world as a psychiatrist and the human condition. the two of them get twisted in each other, especially as drysart spurs alan on during his recollections. for such a short and fast-paced play, it only unravels itself bit by bit to the reader, before culminating at the end with a great bang that continues to reverberate well past the last word.
probably my favourite bit of symbolism in equus was the bit, and how alan would put it on himself. such a deceptively violent form of control. alan desperately wanted to free himself of the chains placed upon him by society, and yet there he was still, fashioning and placing that bit in his mouth, as part of his ritual.
beautifully disturbing, in that ‘young person just has something twisted about them’ way. a play that mixes religious fervour with sexual identity? sign me up. peter shaffer says in his foreword that ‘rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. publishing a play is a reversal of the process.’ this could not be more true of equus - though i don’t think the written play suffers. i came away from this with the very strong desire to see it in person, which i may be able to do later this year, fortuitously. i may have to settle for watching the film, perhaps, because i feel like this play is something that needs to be experienced.
anything that rattles you has done its job, for me. i love getting rattled by things. i understand it is ultimately about the rise of consumerism, materialism, secularism and the modern person’s inability to find organic passion in the world, but i specifically found the theme of the sublimation of desire (=worship?) to be the most interesting. alan finds his connection to equus inexplicable and full of fervour. this play is very perverse. i can only imagine how much more shocking it would have been when it was published in 1973, because it still shocks people 52 years later. it is truly fantastical, in that the entire thing is borne of a boy’s sick fantasy, and that it is expertly crafted.
shaffer attempts to make sense of what seems to be a senseless crime. he tries to link a boy’s loneliness and detachment from society to his madness.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Sexual content
Equus centres around a very violent crime done towards horses, and edges into, at the very least, pseudo-bestiality. It is also entirely in a medical (psychiatric) context.