“Equus” at Menier Chocolate Factory

Jeremy Malies on the Southbank
★★★★☆
25 May 2026

Peter Shaffer’s plays often create a duel between opposing cultures or worldviews. In The Royal Hunt of the Sun it’s Christianity versus Aztec polytheism. Here, it’s the Homeric ancient world studies of psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Toby Stephens) pitched against Equus, the horse god that the demented boy Alan Strang (Noah Valentine) has created. Alan’s madness is in part the result of another conflict between his mother’s staunch Christianity and his father’s atheism.

Noah Valentine and Ed Mitchell.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

Shaffer asked for silver masks with a wide grille through which the audience would clearly see the faces of the actors playing the horses. Director Lindsay Posner bravely dispenses with these masks though the actors wear a smidge of black paint on their faces. There is no attempt at realism, so the production preserves the highly stylized tone that was Shaffer’s overarching aim. This is reinforced by Dysart distancing himself from his memory stream from time to time by addressing us directly.

Stephens succeeds in a role played by Alec McCowen, Colin Blakely, Anthony Perkins, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Griffiths, and Richard Burton. (Burton won plaudits both on Broadway and for a film version directed by Sidney Lumet.) The part is demanding in that the overall structure relies on flashbacks within flashbacks. The piece is layered but continuous apart from the interval.

Stephens conveys the flat and probably sexless marriage in which his character is trapped while flirting convincingly with magistrate Hesther played by Amanda Abbington. Hesther has brought 17-year-old Alan to a psychiatric hospital in Winchester for treatment so that he can avoid a custodial sentence. The boy’s crime? Shaffer had been told by his agent about a case in Suffolk or Norfolk – mercifully the subject of reporting restrictions – in which a stable hand blinded 26 horses with a metal spike. This became the genesis of the drama. The case was in 1971 and the play is set in 1973.

Shaffer chose to make this as much about Dysart as Alan. In this way, he gave vent to his anti-psychiatry ideas which suggest that he was under the influence of R.D. Laing who was objecting to the deification of mental health medicine at the time. Valentine manages to project the boy’s extraordinary strength of character as he allows the enthralled psychiatrist only a drip feed of information. But Alan’s strength is limited, and we learn that the blinding was to stop judgemental gazes from the horses after he fails sexually with colleague Jill (Bella Aubin) who has wanted a literal roll in the hay.

Ed Mitchell and Noah Valentine.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

With the exception of the masks, Posner – as far as I can tell from the play text – stays true to Shaffer’s staging ideas. He works with designer Paul Farnsworth to create a bare wooden set with a revolve that suggests both a stable and a rodeo. Farnsworth is also responsible for the costumes and catches the period with elements as detailed as accessories worn by stable owner Harry played by David Rubin. Rubin inhabits this subsidiary figure totally, and I bought into one of the most sensuous scenes in which the horses are groomed.

But the real brilliance of the production lies in a scene in which Alan rides his favourite horse Nugget (played by Ed Mitchell). The boy is in a euphoric and transcendent state as movement director James Cousins and lighting designer Paul Pyant contrive to have muscles of horse and human seemingly blend. Pyant is also skilful in suggesting sand and sea fret while making the horse actors drift in and out of the darkness. The whole team around Posner help to emphasize that the play is about bodily grace – both human and equine. I thought of the centuries-old debate over exactly what a horse’s legs do when it gallops, a discussion that was only resolved in the 1870s with the advent of rapid-sequence photography.

Mitchell is also required to play the Horseman, a toff gymkhana type who (again, all acted out as a flashback) places the infant Alan astride his horse beneath cliffs in Hampshire. We hear stamping, neighing, whinnying, and vague crowd noises here which are the creation of Adam Cork. The beach scene shows period class awareness and class envy as Alan’s father objects to the rider’s confidence and high-handedness. Period is also evoked well during a scene in which we observe Alan in his mundane day job at an electrical shop. Other cast members (it’s required that all the human actors are on the set throughout) sit in the stalls and bellow questions about product features and availability.

This worked well though I had reservations about a lack of musicality in the way Valentine chants the television jingles that he has picked up while watching Westerns (cowboys truly understand horses, he says) with a neighbouring child. It’s good to know that some of the products in the adverts are making a comeback and Double Diamond (a higher percentage proof now) has begun working wonders again.

Any parallels? Insofar as the focus is as much on the psychiatrist as the patient, Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall comes to mind. And there are the same tensions between monotheistic religion and paganism that run through the work of Brian Friel.

Posner never indulges in bravado (it’s all about suggestion) and does not lose sight of the fact that most of the characters we see are damaged people. I found the play a difficult watch but that is no doubt the point. The production is seeped in ritual and magic, and the entire cast are first-rate. They are witnesses, mediums, and a Chorus.

Equus will transfer to Theatre Royal Bath in July of this year.