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This classy revival of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play about a boy undergoing analysis after blinding six horses reveals its hybrid nature. Equus is an earnest exploration of belief, a homo-erotic study of repressed sexuality and an occasionally absurd melodrama. Lindsay Posner’s production, which marks Shaffer’s centenary, showcases a performance of glittering vulnerability from emerging talent Noah Valentine as the boy, Alan Strang, while Toby Stephens flirts with hysteria as the shrink, Martin Dysart.
Posner’s stripped-back staging also features six hench and mostly silent lads in britches and smeary body makeup who stamp, shoulder-roll and nuzzle to evoke the horses. Young male actors all seem to have superhero bodies these days: parity at last for the exacting standards to which women have always been held, perhaps.
