I fairly recently got Equus out of the library and read it again.  I thought I especially needed to review it because it’s so high on my “Desert Island List,” but I’ve rarely talked to anyone who knows much about it.  Unless it’s a fangirl that happens to know that Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) was naked onstage in a recent version.

Equus is based on the true story of a teenage boy’s apparently senseless injury to horses.  In the play, we find out right away that, in one night, the uneducated boy, Alan, has stabbed several horses blind.  It’s such a horrible, unexpected, and abnormal act that it causes Alan’s parents to send him into counseling with Dr. Martin Dysart, played early on in the play’s running by Anthony Hopkins.

After his initial shock at the nature of the violent incident, the doctor starts peeling away at its internal, psychological causes.  He learns that religious and/or sexual feelings within Alan may have contibuted.  And we, the audience, begin to question whether Alan’s act is nearly as “abnormal” as we first thought.  Throughout his own examination of Alan, the doctor is also forced to confront his own view of what is Normal: “The normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes – all right.  It is also the dead stare in a million adults.  It both sustains and kills – like a God.  It is the Ordinary made beautiful: it is also the Average made lethal.  The Normal is the indispensible, murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest.”

The play is a tight package and touches on important themes of how people can derive their views on religion and sex.  And how the two can be related.  “Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor.  It cannot be created.”  If you get a chance to watch it, go.  It’s usually visually stunning.  And if you get a chance to read it, do.  It’s absolutely a favorite and tops out on the Hurst scale.