Equus

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 has always adored horses and, although Dora Strang may be a slightly overindulgent mother and Frank Strang a slightly tetchy father, they both love their son

To Dysart it is a psychological puzzle to be untangled to alleviate pain or, 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 society

“The closest I have seen a contemporary play come to reanimating the spirit of mystery that makes the stage a place of breathless discovery rather than a classroom for rational demonstration. Mr. Shaffer may have been trying for just such iconography a portrait of the drives that lead men to crucify themselves there. Here I think he’s found it” ~ N.Y. Times