Napier Theatre Company has emerged from the live performance abyss with an engaging production of Peter Shaffer's landmark play about a teenage boy who blinded horses. Equus is the company's inaugural show.
Director (and theatre founder) Anthony Collier competently casts Daric Moore as psychiatrist Martin Dysart,who attempts to uncover what drove teenager Alan Strang (played admirably by Samuel Draper) to perform such a horrific act.
Dysart explores Alan's parental background – his oppressive father and Bible-quoting mother - roles convincingly discharged by Rob Dallas and Carol Williams. Natalie Sandbrook delivers a compassionate performance as a kindly magistrate who implores Dysart to help the boy, then tries to stave off Dysart's gradual breakdown. Rachel Whiting is Alan's would-be lover - thwarted by the boy's obsession with horses.
Dysart envies the boy's capacity for passion, but only uncovers the truth of what happened when he tricks Alan into reliving the events of the night of the blinding. In the end, Dysart appears to be just a disturbed as his patient - regretting that Alan must sacrifice his passion to return to "normality".
Daric Moore delivers a compelling and believable performance in this technically eloquent production. The staging is simple, the lighting and the background music carry the play through to the climactic insights into the struggles of and between the lead characters.
Equus is well worth seeing, not only because it is an iconic play, but because this production demonstrates the quality of Hawke's Bay's theatrical talent – a fabulous inauguration for Napier Theatre Company.
Equus runs to Saturday, November 13, MTG Century Theatre, Napier.
