Translation of the article “Britische Präzision” by Florian Welle
from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Monday, 11 May 2009,
p. 49 (Münchner Kultur)
British Precision
Ek, Ek, Ek, Ek, Ek. Psychiatrist Martin Dysart is mystified. Every night his patient, 17-year-old Alan, shouts out these sounds while dreaming. Over and over. The boy should have been sent to prison – he blinded six horses with a metal spike – and Dysart is his last chance. Over the course of several agonising sessions, the psychiatrist discovers the reasons for Alan’s act. He encounters a bigoted mother who reads to her son endlessly from the Bible, an atheist father who is unable to talk to Alan. Dysart also learns of Alan’s sinister passion for horses, and his first experiences of sex. Alan has created a delusional mythology for himself, worshipping a poster of a horse, and masturbating at night while riding horses that he takes care of during the day as a stable boy. “For the sins of the world…”
Shaffer's award-winning classic Equus was first performed in 1973. Now on the stage at the Teamtheater Tankstelle, it is well worth a visit. Despite some minor hiccups at the beginning of the performance, Peter Bishop’s production with this group of amateur actors was riveting. The production succeeds in intertwining the quickly shifting scenes – including flashbacks to Alan's traumatic childhood and his sexually charged experiences on the night of the horse blinding – to create an intimate theatre piece using very simple means. The set features just four black boxes, flanked by horse stalls that are closed at the beginning of the play. Opening them releases all the things that Alan has been repressing. The most interesting thing about Equus, however, is not so much the reconstruction of the act, as the reactions Alan triggers in his psychiatrist. Through the boy, Dysart comes to realise that something very elementary is missing from his life: passion.