Multiple award-winning British playwright, Sir Peter Shaffer’s brilliant 1973 play, Equus galloped away thumbs-up, at Sunway University College's School of Performance and Media, despite the constraints of space at the blackbox Rooftop Theatre. Kudos goes to the undergraduate performers in their final theatre project, by bringing to a boil the multifarious issues which Shaffer had crafted into the story. 

This took some doing, given the play’s reputation as a raving success at London’s West End and New York’s Broadway (winning the Evening Standard Drama Award, the Drama Critics Award, the Tony Award for Best Play, and New York Drama Critics Award) three decades ago. Sydney Lumet went on to direct the film version with the late Richard Burton and Peter Firth, who had originated the role of the boy on stage.

Director, Melissa Teoh deserves full credit for the disciplined verbal artistry and crisp movements in telling a complicated story in seamless flashbacks with little more than a few boxes on stage. Clever use of sparse lights, evocative original music and a vital Greek chorus all complemented this ensemble production. The horses, played by six actors, sizzled. The play’s primary allure has always been the horses. Hypnotic choral effect accompanied the actors’ ritual donning of the horsehead-sized masks. With this ancient gesture, found in ritual traditions the world over, the actors were transformed into live horses in full view of the audience, now enraptured in pin-drop silence --  a supreme example of the magic of theatre; one wonders how much more effective the horses would have been if they wore hooves as specified in the script.

The young but trained cast evolved the characters to a fitting climax in this psychodrama about 17  year-old Alan Strang (Bryant Albuquerque) who inexplicably blinds six horses. The relentless interrogation by psychiatrist, Martin Dysart (Aaron Teoh) raises several vital issues and forges a bizarre love-hate relationship between the two protagonists. The puzzle is solved in the end, but by then, through a clever twist of the author, the two characters change places, and Dysart is left with the horse bit in his mouth, and Strang is, well, saved.

Both actors were delightful in their challenging roles. Teoh showed a maturity of performance beyond his years, but it was not easy to accept him as a middle-aged doctor in a psychiatric hospital given his diminutive stature and puerile looks. Albuquerque used his physicality well and delivered the complexities his character required; it will be interesting to watch his future progress as a performer.

Mark Previn Pillay’s portrayal as the enigmatic working-class father was realistic, especially in the poignant porn movie scene. Eri Pang’s characterization of the school-teacher mother was earnest and sincere, though lacking conviction in parts. Erica Tham got the most out of a supporting role of a magistrate and friend of the doctor.

It is amazing how Shaffer got such a small group of characters in a small English town to address some of the most universal and timeless issues in a mystery thriller. The issues ranged from social and sexual mores, parenthood, religious bigotry, science, materialism, reason, passion, and deconstructs what society considers “normalcy”. The Sunway production focused on the vagaries of adolescence, social conformity and family dysfunctions, themes which ought to have resonated with the age-group of the actors and the majority of the audience. 

However, with a plethora of dizzying themes coming fast and furious, the audience could be forgiven for missing a number of these issues, especially those which were culturally alien. Some which seemed to miss the audience were the underlying socio-economic class differences, the western world’s preoccupation with the death of religion, and the emergent new psychotherapy methods in modifying human behaviour exemplified by the doctor’s own private hell. But the issues which did hit the audience were unerring in their accuracy – family dysfunction, sexual angst and adolescent miasma. Those were sufficient to keep the drama heat up to the final spectacular scene of the seduction of Alan by the sassy Jill Mason (played to the hilt by the voluptuous Zalikha Harun), and the subsequent blinding of the horses.

In the heady 60s and 70s these questions were constantly debated, and the search for meaningful and relevant paradigms were characterized by social and political upheavals, the emergence of counter-culture movements, great scientific finds, space exploration, gigantic technological strides, and some really cool creativity especially in the arts. Some called it the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.  

But are these issues relevant today? The answer is yes, and underscores why there is a revival of this play in the UK with Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Porter fame) playing the boy. The central theme of alienation in the play seems even more critical now in a world gone crazy with cybernetics, eroded parental guidance, vanishing commonsense values, religious over-reactions, mass destructions and ecological suicide. The Alan Strang in all of us is itching with the same questions, inviting the same bitterness and bewilderment, and capable of directing similar havoc to ourselves and to those around us, people as well as creatures.

The keepers of humanity’s seal: parents, head-shrinkers, magistrates, purveyors of entertainment, objects of desire, priests - all featured in the play - have to constantly re-invent themselves to remain relevant, and human. It will be interesting to be part of the discussions on this question of art imitating life imitating art.

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Mano Maniam is a theatre-kaki from the early 60s, still refusing to fade away. Besides the stage, he has appeared in Hollywood films (Anna and The King, Sleeping Dictionary) and TV (Kopitiam, Kampong Boy, Mat Gelap). From acting, directing, stage managing and teaching drama in a university, he does the occassional review. This is his first in for Kakiseni.