Equus is a psychological thriller from 1973 which opens with a revolting discovery. An unbalanced stable-lad, Alan, spends his evenings taking the horses out for an illicit gallop. Meanwhile, he’s busy seducing a hot young cowgirl at the farm but his awakening sexuality confuses him. The girl’s erotic nature brings out his closeted gay side and he tries to purge his homosexuality by stabbing six stallions in the eyes. A mopy shrink (Zubin Varla) takes on Alan’s case but finds himself investigating his own troubled psyche instead. Some of the details in Peter Shaffer’s play have dated badly. Alan’s parents are caricatures of nauseating suburban inanity. The mum is a simpering Bible-hugging Christian while the father is a shouty disciplinarian who denies the existence of God. This pairing looks like a butter-fingered attempt to suggest ‘a house divided against itself’.
In the early 1970s, gay love was still a sufficiently tricky topic to need encryption, and the play approaches it sideways on, with hints and clues.
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