Theater Review: Equus

In the case of Broadway V. Harry Potter, Et Al, the main consideration is this: can a child actor, constrained by a role he's played since he was twelve, expect to be taken seriously by theater-goers and the Broadway intelligencia? What's more, can he overcome that role after five films and before three more? It's difficult to think of Equus outside of its apparent function of breaking Daniel Radcliffe out of his mainstream perception as the do-gooder wizard, and, in truth, a great deal of the buzz surrounding the play has to do with the very fact that this nineteen year-old actor is trying to shatter his million-dollar mold. There's an argument to be made for Radcliffe's involvement in the revival of Paul Shaffer's play being the stuff of a great PR firm, but with Richard Griffiths—Harry Potter's Uncle Vernon, in other words—there's an argument to be made that maybe—just maybe—this all happened rather organically.

Equus itself, however, can be approached without prejudice. Now over thirty years old, Paul Shaffer's play has endured throughout the years for very good reason. The pacing and phrasing of dialogue—both as performed on stage and as read in the play itself—is as rhymthic as a hymnal; the movement of the story never stops or bloats. Themetically, the play pits the worshipful against the worshipless as Alan Strang (Radcliffe) is put right by Dr. Martin Dysart (Griffiths): while Dysart sighs over the distant majesty of Greek mythology and questions the sterile, passionless results of his life's work, Strang embraces—shamelessly—what he believes to be a real, living god.

Despite what audiences may think going into the play, Daniel Radcliffe is, for the most part, a supporting actor in target="_blank">Equus, taking center stage off and on throughout the play. He does shrug off the gold-and-red mantle pretty successfully, if only because Alan Strang couldn't be further from the bespectacled wizard. There is a coldness to Radcliffe's performance that is preternatural, and he evokes the dark spirituality of his character with chilling precision. Equus is the hump for Radcliffe, a necessary one where his performance that cannot be talked about without referencing the Harry Potter franchise, and in February, when he puts Equus behind him, he'll turn to find that he's cleared the hump quite well.

From the first curtain, Richard Griffiths is the play's magnetic north, its molten core. The trick of Equus is that it is deeply disturbing and diabolically clever at the very same time, in an equal and balanced measure that never makes an absurdity out of either characteristic. While Paul Shaffer's writing bears the most blame for this tremendous feat, the whole house of cards would collapse without Griffiths' affable congeniality, his self-loathing deprecation, and the dark whimsy of his delivery. Dysart is unable to reconcile his exaltation of the godly with the defilement he perpetrates upon the children he treats, but Griffiths makes him sympathetic instead of monstrous and delivers the intent of Shaffer's writing with a precision above that of Dysart's scalpel. Like the set design, Griffiths' portrayal is sparse at first glace, but as he and the other actors move the four blocks that comprise the main set pieces into a doctor's office, a private hospital room, a suburban home, and a bed of straw, Griffiths moves the dark, simple shapes of his character into unthought-of architecture, a complex structure made of the simplest shapes and angles.

With a little over a month left in the limited engagement, Equus will soon fade from the minds of theater-goers who meant to go and Harry Potter fans who lined up at the Broadhurst's back door instead of at the box office, but for those who saw it, the play will linger for a long time.

Tags:   broadhurst theater, broadway, daniel radcliffe, equus, harry potter, kate mulgrew, paul shaffer, richard griffiths

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Posted on 12/22/2008 ( Permanent Link )
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