Inside the Holy of Holies
Richard Simon reviews Equus

Who would have believed it? Even in these savage times, there still exists a handful of Sri Lankans who may be described as educated and sophisticated. An endangered minority, their liberality and cosmopolitanism feared and hated by powerful brutes whose ‘culture’ is race-myth and ancient barbarism, they tend to keep their heads down most of the time. But Equus has brought them out.

On opening night at the British School Auditorium, at least three generations could be distinguished: elderly cognoscenti and maestri, former pillars of the old Art Centre Club, now tottering slightly; cultured merchants and bluestocking wives in their prime, the kind of people who buy art and donate to cultural causes; and – glory be! – a substantial turnout of teenagers and young adults, testifying by their presence that even in these dark, bloody days, the torch is being passed on.

Equus is not an easy play. The tale of Alan Strang, a teenage boy who blinds six horses in a fit of rage and despair, and Martin Dysart, the troubled psychiatrist who attempts to heal him, makes for intense, often terrifying theatre. Written by Peter Shaffer (Amadeus, Royal Hunt of the Sun) in the mid-Seventies, the script flirts with sex, violence, nudity and blasphemy. For some playgoers, this would be challenge enough, but Equus demands intellectual effort too: Alan’s case raises complex religious and psychological questions, which Shaffer explores thoroughly but never answers. Not the sort of thing Colombo audiences, raised on a diet of bad farces and ineptly staged Broadway musicals, are well equipped to deal with.

Yet there was no question, on opening night, that the play was getting through to people. You could hear it in the pin-drop silence between lines at tense moments, the sudden, brief outbreak of buttock-shifting and throat-clearing when the tension broke or lifted, the collective animal exhalation that greeted the end of the mighty set-piece, Alan’s midnight ride, which concludes the first half. They got Equus. They got it under their skin.

This is no small tribute to Steve de la Zilwa and his cast. He and Rohan Ponniah, who plays the lead role of Dysart, the psychiatrist, know just what they’re up against. ‘The times we live in are conservative and repressed,’ says Ponniah, who also played Dysart in the 1978 production. ‘Thirty years ago we were more liberated; the word ‘normal’ had a broader, more inclusive definition.’ Back then, he argues, director and cast could assume a common set of cultural reference-points; these can no longer be taken for granted, so the players must work harder to communicate.

Their response is a grown-up Equus, an Equus for the Noughties. Those who saw Chris Herft’s 1978 production will remember an elaborate Seventies experience: lots of coloured lights, an elaborate tiered set and Richard de Zoysa playing a centaur rather than the horseman he was supposed to be. This time round, there’s none of that. The set is all grey and black, unrelieved by any splash of colour. Shaffer’s stage directions have been closely followed: most of the action takes place within a railed enclosure, a bit like a boxing ring, which is by turns Dysart’s consulting chamber, the stable where Alan works at weekends, a cinema, a shop and – rivetingly – Alan’s Field of Ha Ha where, naked and bleeding from a thousand tiny pricks, he rides his horse-god to an ecstasy at once religious and sexual.

The maturity of theatrical technique is humbling. Spectacular effects are achieved with a minimum of fuss. The only stage furniture consists of four grey wooden boxes that change position and function as scene succeeds scene, serving as chairs, tables, beds and cinema seats. The elegant disposition of these boxes (the actors move them as they play their parts) is one of the subtlest pieces of stagecraft this reviewer has ever witnessed on a Colombo stage. The lighting, too, is of exquisite subtlety.

But these are minor pleasures. It is in the quality of its performances, each the product of an intimate, fraught collaboration between actor and director, that this Equus stands head and shoulders above any other English play staged in Colombo for twenty years or more.

As a director, Steve de la Zilwa’s greatest strength may well be the wonderful ensemble performances he elicits from his actors. Equus is no exception. Even the four silent young men who play horses move with ease and confidence; no dumb skittles here. Among the supporting roles, Dominic Kellar and Janice de Zoysa are competent and sympathetic and Shannon Raymond’s horseman on the beach is a sardonic delight, while Shanaka Amarasinghe is likeable and convincing as the elder Strang. Ranmali Mirchandani as the magistrate has to work hard to make her character shine within the heroic penumbra of Rohan Ponniah’s Dysart; in the hands of a less accomplished actress, it might have disappeared completely, but Mirchandani makes it live.

Subha Wijesiriwardena’s character – Jill the stablehand – is central to the action. The young actress is equal to the role, though the vivacity with which she interprets it makes you wonder what a livewire like her could possibly see in a loser like Alan Strang. She was excellent in the ‘nude’ (not really) scene, unselfconscious and focused on the script.

Tracy Holsinger is Alan’s mother, a character that could easily be interpreted as two-dimensional – narrow-minded, conventional, all constipated gentility and religious guilt. Holsinger breaks through this caricature to show us the conflicted, loving, troubled soul beneath. Her performance adds considerable depth and dramatic tension to the play.

Alan Strang – not very bright but dazzlingly imaginative, suspicious of others yet yearning for affection, hugging his secret sexuality and faith to himself as he makes his solitary way through life – is a character that makes great physical and psychological demands on the actor, who must convincingly portray a boy who has recently blinded six horses and is now living with the act. It is a role that requires an old head on young shoulders. Hiran Abeysekera, who plays Alan, is a remarkable find: a product of the Somalatha Subasinghe School of Drama, he has evidently worked his own way into the character, growing into the role at rehearsal but saving his best for the performance. If there are many more like him among his generation, there’s hope for us yet.

Abeysekera’s character provides the high drama of Equus; Dysart provides the interpretation. Yet it is the latter who dominates the play. It is a part Rohan Ponniah might have been born for. His return to the role (which he also played in 1978) is mature and measured, yet the effect is colossal. His style is dramatic in the old-fashioned way, almost declamatory at times, yet utterly believable, and he possesses the intellectual depth necessary to locate, unfold and project the multiple layers of emotion and meaning that inhabit the psychiatrist’s complex, tortured soul. No other Sri Lankan actor could play Dysart so well, and Ponniah gives the performance of his life.

None of this was lost on Thursday night’s audience. There were restless moments during the first half, in which Shaffer deploys his characters like pieces on a chessboard, but the second half with its scalp-crawling revelations and serial climaxes had people on the edges of their seats. Leaving the theatre after the standing-ovation curtain call, they were subdued, almost shell-shocked. If, as we are often told, the psychological object of tragedy is catharsis, then Equus must be considered a grand success; that opening-night audience was well and truly reamed out.

Yes, there were a few folk whose expectations of ‘entertainment’ were confounded, a few inane giggles at lines meant to elicit at most a wry, ironic smile – and yes, there was one prize ass who thought himself and his moneygrubbing too important to switch off his mobile phone. There are always a few. But everybody else got it. Equus Almighty, how they got it.