EQUIS

This may be a really really stupid question... so i apologize in advance. But I assume EQUUS has never made it on Broadway... right?

Updated On: 8/15/05 at 12:25 AM

EQUUS -- note the spelling -- was one of the longest running hit Broadway plays of the 70s (if not THE longest), lasting three years, winning the Tony for Best Play and became a movie starring Richard Burton and Peter Firth (repeating his Tony nominated role as Alan Strang).

And yes, the long nude scenes were there in the original production (there was a LOT of nudity on the Broadway stage in the 70s and 80s).

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I recently saw a FANTASTIC production of it. Is the movie any good?

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EQUUS is my favorite play. Shaffer is aboslutely brilliant. I liked the movie, but i think seeing it on stage is better because the movie made everything SO literal, whereas the stage production, if done well and correctly, is very abstract.

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yeah, equus really did have a pretty amazing run for a play in the 70s. It is really, really well written, and the character development for each character is stunning.

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Great play. Like everyone else said it was a hit on Broadway. That's actually how Tom Hulce(Amadeus-movie) got his break on Broadway in Equus. He was understudying for Peter Firth and one afternoon Peter didn't show up and Tom had to go on. The audience loved him and then when Firth left the show he took over. Quite cool.

Love that play.

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Exactly. No apologies. Never apologize never explain. Okay well sometimes you do, but in this case you don't. Nevermind I'll just shut up.

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In addition to Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton, other Dysarts during the original production included Anthony Perkins, Alec McCowen and Leonard Nimoy.

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Jenny Agutter made Equus worthwhile for me. Jenny Agutter was one of my numerous celebrity crushes. She was Peter Firth's girl in Equus. She was in Walkabout (1971), Logan's Run (1976) and An American Werewolf In London (1981). Jenny is British and had that same Old World appeal for me that Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA had in the 1970s. I watched Equus a few times because of Jenny. I finally found the story so bizarre that I let it go because I was afraid it might affect me psychologically. Equus is Latin for "horse," and if I remember correctly, the kid had some kind of fetish for horses. It turned out that Richard Burton as his psychiatrist had hang-ups too. It is a strange tale. Was it not written by Peter Shaffer, the same guy who wrote Amadeus? I see Minnie Driver as a kind of modern day Jenny Agutter. I am 59 now and attracted only to women young enough to be my daughters. Equus must have twisted me in some way.
Jim Colyer

Updated On: 2/6/05 at 01:41 AM

Since I didn't know who T.R. Knight is, I googled him and yes, I would like to see this young man in Equus, based purely on the talent he has demonstrated in plays at the Guthrie, off-Broadway, etc., and not at all on the nudity required by the role in Equus. (Here's a picture from his Guthrie Bio.)

Margo - owing to the demographics of the Broadway audience these days, the Dysart casting will be the draw. Who do you see as viable? I, personally, would like to see Kline try it, to see if he could pull it off (quite a stretch, I realize.) I also would sell my mother for tickets if Sam Sheppard agreed to do it.

DGrant,

It wasn't a "best of the 80s" list -- it was a list of some of the 80s plays that have ALREADY been revived on Broadway.

I wonder if either Bent or M Butterfly would have enough appeal at this point to make a mainstream stage revival viable (they both became rather unsuccessful low budget films). It's not so much that they're dated, but I'm unclear whether there's a pressing reason to bring them back at this point (especially M Butterfly -- not nearly enough time has passed -- I think that the vast majority of the audience remembers what the main plot twist is, so they wouldn't want to bother paying Broadway prices to see it again).

Bent may be ripe for a decent revival, off-Broadway perhaps (I saw it done off-off-Broadway again just last year). I'm still not convinced that it's a "great" play, but it can be effective with a good production. Perhaps, if a first rate director wants to re-think it and stage someplace like the Donmar or the Goodman first, we might see it again in New York at some point.

EQUUS strikes me as a much more timeless play than either Butterfly or Bent -- better in construction and more universal in theme. Dysart is a great role for any actor in the 40 to 70 range -- Kline, Spacey, Freeman, Denehey, Neeson, Bosco, Lithgow, Irons, McKellan et al ......

Shepard just returned to the stage for the first time in 30 years (only the second time in his life) to do a limited engagement in Caryl Churchill's "A Number" at NY Theatre Workshop. He did it because he said he thought that it was the greatest play he had encountered since Beckett's "Waiting For Godot." I wouldn't expect to see him commit to another stage run ....... well ..... EVER. I really think that was it. He really isn't anything special as a stage actor and I got the sense that it really wasn't his thing and he really doesn't care for the rigors of it -- HATES it probably. And, if I'm being honest, frankly, I truly doubt that he has the "chops" or technique to pull off Dysart on a Broadway stage eight times a week ...... he's a "film actor" at best and should stay in that medium for his future forays into acting.

He really was just "good" in "A Number" in a modest-sized venue like NYTW (200-odd seats), but even there, his performance was so small and internal that I simply couldn't imagine him being able to give a performance that would "fill the space" of a Broadway-sized house (he gave half of his performance with his head down, talking to his belt so that anyone beyond the first four or five rows of the tiny raked house couldn't see anything, but the top of his head and could barely hear what he was saying -- it sort of worked for this particular character, but, c'mon he could NEVER play a role like Dysart in a 1000 seat house ..... not that he would ever agree to do it).

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Updated On: 2/6/05 at 06:17 AM

Daniel Davis played Dysart almost 30 years ago. He was way too young for it then, but I'd love to see him do it now. Something post-Cage of course.

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