Equus

Equus
By Peter Shaffer

When people would ask what I was reading and I told them Equus, the most prevalent response was, "Oh yeah! That's the one that Harry Potter was naked in!" Yes, this was the play Daniel Radcliffe was in, and yes the part required him to be naked. I don't really care. What's more important to me is that this play was fantastic.
The story focuses on a boy Alan and his psychologist Dysart. The play starts with Alan having had blinded 6 horses with spikes at the stable at which he works. Dysart probes the inner-workings of Alan's mind deftly.
Equus is more than anything a statement on the effects of the modern condition on the minds of its subjects. Alan is stuck between the conservative Christianity of his mother and his father's scientific intellectualism. The strain drives Alan into insanity and into the deification of horses that 5th grade girls could only dream of.
The way the play is staged is inventive and brilliant. All the actors stay on stage throughout the play. Flashbacks are done in the middle of scenes, with actors rising from their places on a bench (still onstage) to talk to the characters in the middle of the action. It's not hard to imagine what's going on and so this technique adds a sort of fluidity that is as beneficial to a reading as I'd imagine it would be to a viewing.
The mastery of the play is Dysart and Alan's sessions. Alan is obviously as intelligent as he is disturbed. Dysart is a very capable psychologist who doesn't fall prey to Alan's hysterics. Dysart has his own basket of psychological issues that are not all that different from Alan's, but Dysart recognizes them clearly but sees no escape. Except, that is, for the insanity that Alan has adopted.
Sexuality in the modern world is a main theme of the play. How is a young man supposed to reconcile newly-loosened sexual mores with traditional and irrational restrictions? Blinding horses seems to be the only way (okay, it's a bit more nuanced than that, but still).
The play doesn't offer any easy answers, only complex critiques, which is a relief. Shaffer asks us to examine the contradictions both in ourselves and our modern society.