Equus

Fülszöveg

On the back of this jacket are some of the comments which made it clear that with Equus Peter Shaffer (to quote the Sunday Times) gallops to glory. The National Theatre production, an inspired one with a brilliant cast, also received unqualified praise; but reading the play is proof that serious theatrical success rests with the playwright. It is a memorable experience on the page as well as on the stage.
Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist, is confronted with Alan Strang, a boy who has blinded six horses.
To the owner of the horses the horror is simple: he was unlucky enough to employ 'a loony'. To the boy's parents it is a hideous mystery: Alan had always adored horses, and although Dora Strang may have been a slightly over-indulgent mother and Frank Strang a slightly tetchy father, they both loved their son. To Dysart it is a psychological puzzle to be untangled and pain to be alleviated or rather, given his profession, that, is what it ought to be. As it turns out, it is... Tovább

Fülszöveg

On the back of this jacket are some of the comments which made it clear that with Equus Peter Shaffer (to quote the Sunday Times) gallops to glory. The National Theatre production, an inspired one with a brilliant cast, also received unqualified praise; but reading the play is proof that serious theatrical success rests with the playwright. It is a memorable experience on the page as well as on the stage.
Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist, is confronted with Alan Strang, a boy who has blinded six horses.
To the owner of the horses the horror is simple: he was unlucky enough to employ 'a loony'. To the boy's parents it is a hideous mystery: Alan had always adored horses, and although Dora Strang may have been a slightly over-indulgent mother and Frank Strang a slightly tetchy father, they both loved their son. To Dysart it is a psychological puzzle to be untangled and pain to be alleviated or rather, given his profession, that, is what it ought to be. As it turns out, it is something far more complex and disturbing: a confrontation with himself as well as with Alan, in which he comes to an inescapable view of man's need to worship and the distortions forced on that need by "civilized" society.
continued on back flap
continued from front flap
Since this is a story of discovery, the reader's excitement would be diminished by a detailed account of its development. An idea of its nature is conveyed by the words of Walter Kerr (writing in the New York Times): "The closest I have seen a contemporary play come - it is powerfully close - to reanimating the spirit of mystery that makes the stage a place of breathless discovery rather than a classroom for rational demonstration is Peter Shaffer's remarkable Equus Mr Shaffer is the author of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and he may have been trying for just such iconography - a portrait of the drives that lead men to crucify themselves - there. Here, I think, he has found it.'
Jacket Photograph by A nthony Crickmay, 1 Observer !Trans-World Vissza