Equus received the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best play as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Shaffer also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Equus in 1977. In 1979, Shaffer produced what is generally considered his best-known work, Amadeus, which he has described as “a fantasia on events in (18th century composer Wolfgang Amadeus) Mozart’s life.
Throughout the play, this understanding becomes clearer as it is examined from its first dawning in Dr. Dysart’ s mind to its final conclusion. Scene Two of the play moves backward in time to the day Mrs. Hesther Salomon visits Dr. Dysart to personally request his taking on Alan’ s case as the details of it are too disgusting for her entire court and for most other doctors to treat with.
Equus is a play about a boy, Alan Strang, who blinds six horses with a hoof pick. Equus is a play about a psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, who must normalize the boy back into society. But Dysart discovers that his own pagan outlook is deficient next to Alan’s ecstatic experience as self created God-incarnate.
Equus by Peter Shaffer 1973 Royal National Theatre Is Passion a Worthwhile Price to Pay? With its minimalistic set design, small cast, and a stage with nearly no lighting, Peter Shaffer’s play Equus relies heavily on a masterfully written script to spread its message with the audience.
Equus by Peter Shaffer 1973 Royal National Theatre Is Passion a Worthwhile Price to Pay? With its minimalistic set design, small cast, and a stage with nearly no lighting, Peter Shaffer’s play Equus relies heavily on a masterfully written script to spread its message with the audience. The play is “neither great theatre nor bad psychology, but it has elements of both” (Witham).
Directed by Sidney Lumet. With Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Colin Blakely, Joan Plowright. A psychiatrist attempts to uncover a troubled stable boy's disturbing obsession with horses.
The play Equus was written by Peter Shaffer in 1973, and opened the same year. Since then it has been adapted for film, and has been revived for the stage. In 2007 it was reset with a famous British cast. It is interesting to compare the critical response of the original production and the revival.
Equus Summary “Equus” is a 1974 Tony Award-winning play written by Peter Schaffer and published in 1973. It details the efforts of Dr. Martin Dysart to get to the root of the problems affecting neurotic seventeen year-old Alan Strang, who has blinded six horses with a pick at the stable where he works.