Glen Eden Playhouse
April 15-21 | Reviewed by Imogen Neale

PETER SHAFFER’s 1973 play Equus poses two big performance questions: how to stage the horses and, how to handle the nudity?

For Jessie Peach the answers are big boots with horseshoe like plates nailed into the bottom and just doing it: letting Ashley Hawkes (who plays Alan Strang) be bare when it really counts.

Staged at the charming Glen Eden Playhouse theatre, Peach Productions performance of Equus does a commendable job of bringing this thriller come line of theological questioning to life – so much so that many people walked out of the theatre and into the cold sharp night looking as if they were evaluating a few things.

See, one of the ideas that Peach’s strong cast really punches out is that societies ‘norm’ isn’t for everyone. Indeed, even those who ostensibly live comfortably within the norm may not be comfortable nor normal. Take the child psychiatrist Dr Martin Dysart (Phil Adams) for example. Married, successful, handsome and highly respected he’s put on a pedestal as the perfection of normality. As we discover through his very frank and open pontificating, however, he is far from comfortable. On the other hand, the young Alan Strang (Ashley Hawkes) – Dysart’s patient – is not normal: he loves horses as if they were close human counterparts, talks in sing-song television commercials and has just violently blinded a number of horses he was extremely close to.

Who is happier? Well there lies the mystery.

Although this is only Jessie Peach’s third production, he has made some wise decisions. Firstly, the stage is sparse – it has two angled towering barbed wire walls that draw the eye towards the centre – an open but shadowy space that reminds us dark questions lurk behind the comical tête-à-tête. It’s also a space that is used to great effect when Alan’s remoteness needs to be emphasised via a soft spotlight.

Secondly, most of the cast (save the horses) stay on the stage the entire time – they sit against the wall in darkness. This allows them to stride into the scene at any moment – lending the performance an anxious edge.

Thirdly the cast is well chosen – as is the setting: Cambridge, traditionally NZ’s home of horses. Although there is nothing that visually alludes to this setting – but the few times it is mentioned reminds the audience that this isn’t a story to be taken as belong to another time and place: it could just as easily happen here in our own lush pastures.

While the entire cast is to be commend for strong performances (and where did they find the very well muscled and incredibly cut ‘horse’?) accolades must go to Ashley Hawkes. With a piercing stare, a shyness that turns into violent frustration and an ability to embody all the misdirected anger and shame the real Alan must have felt, Ashley’s performance alone makes the Peach Production’s performance of Equus worth watching.