“Normality is the beautiful smile in a child's eyes. It's also the dead stare of a million adults. "Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay - Peter Schaffer As the deeply conflicted psychiatrist Dysart, Richard Griffiths delivers this phrase with wonderful restraint to the audience in new Broadway revival of Peter Schaffer's play 1973 play, “Equus,” directed by Thea Sharrock Essentially a psychosexual mystery, the play introduces in its first minutes the case of Alan Strang (Danielle Radcliffe), a disturbed seventeen-year-old. who one night violently blinds six horses with a metal spike. As the boy and the doctor play cat and mouse during their sessions to discover more about each other, the sexual and religious confusion that led to that chilling night is deconstructed in a twisted mix of accidents, puritanical upbringing and authoritative and deeply passionate adoration. The 1977 film adaptation of Sidney Lumet's “Equus,” with Richard Burton as Dysart and Peter Firth as Alan, remains faithful to this narrative structure: neither production is a “mystery,” but rather a Freudian investigation of “why he did it”. Both the film and the stage show showcase passionate performances from seasoned and young actors, and both adaptations are steeped in Christian mythology and surreal metaphors. The difference, therefore - and it is an enormous difference - lies in the intrinsic suitability of the medium to the nature of the work. Despite a plot that relies so heavily on memories, psychological connections, and mental images, the realism of Lumet's film fails to capture the poetic mystery of the work, an essential quality captured in the theatrical symbolism of the stage production. John Napier's minimalist set design requires more work from the audience to fill in the visual and emotional gaps in the plot, further aiding the surreal atmosphere so crucial to this show. The stage resembles a boxing ring where Alan and Dysart train, as well as a Greek temple filled with audience chants located high above the action. This connotation of temple is drawn upon when the stage functions as a sanctified stable, the Holy of Holies of Equus in which Alan and Jill attempt to make unholy love, triggering Alan's breakdown. It could be said that the stylized, totemic horse masks worn by the dancers over hoof-like wedged footwear achieve a more majestic and haunting presence than the actual equines used in the film. While the film is undoubtedly well acted and intelligently directed, the audience is not allowed to use its imagination, whether through the redundant images of the sterile Dysart with his impassive wife, or through the gratuitous violence in the final re-enactment of the crime of Alan. The play's cathartic ending is choreographed for more surprising than sadistic effect, while the film's ruthlessly literal version is so sensational and repulsive that it distracts the viewer from properly analyzing the scene's symbolic importance. The father's retelling of Alan's flagellation under the otherworldly image of the horse is similarly dramatized by voiceover, further stripping Alan's worship of its original, more perversely disturbing mystique. Even Alan's midnight horseback rides, written by Schaffer as clandestine communion rites,they are enacted for all to see, and the sacred posters above his bed are recreated and displayed as literal, limited images. Lumet is surprisingly heavy-handed in places too, such as when the camera stops very purposefully on Richard Burton holding the Christ poster next to the horse poster while looking significantly between the two, as if to further spell out for the public the obvious psychological connection. The literal nature of the film provides the gateway to some of the most painterly images: when Alan runs through the cabbages in the moonlight with Jill, he describes the entire countryside as steel-plated gray in the voice off-screen: the image couldn't be more fitting. However, the images are more often than not excessive and the film seems to have little faith in the imaginative capacity or intelligence of the audience. That said, the film version offers some advantages, such as angles, that cannot be achieved through the theater. There are many moments of cinematic beauty that are quite effective, such as Alan's first horseback ride on the beach. Lumet gives this scene a heightened passion and dreamy quality that captures the magic of Alan's moment more beautifully than the theatrical version, particularly because the camera can show the beach ride from Alan's point of view. The audience more easily identifies with Alan's amazement as the camera observes the great, impossibly tall knight from the point of view of the small character of a six-year-old. When the camera mounts the screen above this great black beauty, the audience also experiences Alan's reverie; the music and the view create a rhythm and a floating sensation in this visual gallop along the beach. The audience can connect to Alan more intimately from these shared experiences or memories; we can better understand the beauty and magic he felt in this moment and the subsequent infatuation he develops with horses. Likewise, close-ups of Firth in full agony bring a merciless immediacy to Alan's inner turmoil, as the audience is not spared the intensity of his eyes (the accusatory stare, of which much is made of throughout the show ). This dangerous glimpse brings the audience closer to Alan's psyche throughout the film, characterizing him more vividly as someone "who sees and feels more deeply than ordinary people." An enviable depth, the work suggests, "even if it prohibits those who possess it from fully belonging to human society" (Brantley). Both Firth and Radcliffe's performances portray Alan with comparable degrees of agitation and distress, humanizing him enough for the audience to feel it. sympathize with his situation. Firth's characterization, however, is seen much more closely on camera, with every double of his face and tremor of his body more immediately palpable, making his performance that much more unstable and unsettling. In fact, it feels a little too close to feel comfortable with Firth's naked, brutally honest Alan. One can more easily focus on Radcliffe's deft stage presence from the pleasing distance in a theater, also making the experience easier to "otherize" as a jarring psychological case study, and less as a personal, achingly intimate journey. Finally, perhaps the most obvious interpretative differences lie in the senior actors. At the heart of “Equus” is the story of an elderly man who experiences extraordinary internal doubts late in his life: a professional and ethical crisis. For the exhausted Dysart, played by Griffiths with precise banality, professional detachment and discreet self-irony, the fantasiesAlan's furies and devotion have “the mythical grandeur of Homer's Olympus” (Brantley). Dysart not only envies Alan for his wild Dionysian passions, but also questions the legitimacy of his own work. By eliminating all that is abnormal in Alan, Dysart fears that he is also removing Alan's individuality and ability to worship. He compares the return to Normality to an emotional lobotomy, saying: “It sustains and kills, like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Media made lethal. The Normal is the indispensable and murderous God of Health, and I am his Priest” (Schaffer). As the play begins, Dysart is shocked by a nightmare in which he presides over the ritual sacrifices of young children, noting that although he is clearly "the best... as a head priest," he is disgusted by his actions and deeply empty. Faced with his growing stress, however, in the dream he remembers feeling disproportionate terror at the idea of ​​being discovered by the other medical priests. This conveniently foreshadows Dysart's growing introspection and discontent during his sessions with Alan, as he too comes to feel similarly unbearable judgment from Equus, Alan's image of God: “'It matters to me,' he says, staring Equus. 'First account for me.'. . .” (Schaffer) Of this deistic spirit that resides in all horses, Dysart confesses: “I keep thinking about the horse! Not the boy: the horse and what he might be trying to do. I keep seeing that huge head kissing him with its mouth chained. Pushing through the metal some utterly irrelevant desire to fill one's belly or propagate one's species. What wish could that be? . . . See, I'm wearing that horse head too. This is the feeling. All held in check in old language and old assumptions, striving to leap cleanly onto a completely new track of being that I only suspect is there" (Schaffer). His reflections, despite the language of horsemanship, refer to an ontological desire that forms a central theme in the show. “The effort to leap with clean paws onto a completely new path of being that I only suspect is there” is one of the most visual images that describe the Kierkegaardian leap of faith Alan's unquestioning devotion to this leap, his passion and courage that allows him to do so, what Dysart sadly lacks as an unattractive Dysart, therefore, Griffiths is convincingly ordinary and reasonable, speaking in an expert tone, accustomed, flattened, sometimes witty expressions Griffiths is not too quick to shed Dysart's imperturbable and less dramatic characteristics, and admirably refrains from overacting every opportunity in Schaffer's work in loud, tortured monologues. As Ben Brantley of the New York Times notes, "He builds Dysart's character carefully, so when the explosions of naked doubt, self-loathing and pain finally erupt, he's earned them." Ironically, Burton's great portrayal of Dysart has all the intelligence but less the sensitivity of Griffith's realism. While Lumet's film may be criticized for its realism, his actors are still, of course, movie stars. Burton suffers too hard, too majestically for the professional, Apollonian Dysart, and while the intensity of his performance is captivating to watch, it feels less truthful to the character and his complaints. For a sterile psychiatrist who laments his lack of passion in life, Burton certainly infuses enough machismo into Dysart's monologues to remind viewers of his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. His performance in the film is powerful, but by not toning down the precision of his performance, his off-screen character comes close. 2003.