Eq...Eq... Equus!

Saw the play last night, thanks to Roomie who generously gifted me with a ticket for my birthday. Again, I am not capable of making highly intellectual criticisms of the actual play, so I will again, choose to make a very jologs type of review here.

Just a brief summary, though. The play revolves around an aging psychiatrist, Dr. Dysart (Richard Griffiths) who specializes in treating children. He works on the case of teenager Alan Strang (Daniel Radcliffe) who is committed to the hospital after blinding six horses in the stable he is employed in. While treating Alan and trying to find out why the boy did what he did, he is troubled when he finds that the boy has more passion than he will ever have in his life. He admits that he is jealous that the boy could be so passionate about his belief in the horse god, Equus, that he conjured up in his mind.

Intriguing story... and of course, great acting from Richard Griffiths. I thought he had great comedic timing. His experience shines onstage as you can see how comfortable he is to be there. As for Daniel Radcliffe, yes, he has improved a huge deal since the first Harry Potter film. However, I still felt that sometimes he didn't really know what to do with his body. Like he still felt so conscious of it. Or maybe that's part of the character, since he is supposed to be a not-so-well-adjusted teen after all. It was very effective, though, in the scenes where his character does not know what to do with the girl. One thing I can say, too, is that that Dan Radcliffe, he got some guts. Letting his chinkle chankle dingle dangle around the stage while pretend stabbing the horses in front of people like Richard Griffiths, I imagine, would take some really tough guts to pull off.

Also, I was very impressed with the production. It was simple, yet gave me the chills for the most part. Men wore metal horse heads and hooves to portray the horses in the stable. I can name a couple of happy people who will enjoy seeing this impressive, impressive sight. There was one particular scene when a lazy-susan-type portion of the stage was spinning with Dan Radcliffe hoisted up the shoulders of one particular horse who was trotting. It was an incredible sight.

All in all, it was quite an enjoyable experience. Especially being preceded by a great dinner at this Japanese resto--Kodama--where we had, notably, grilled tuna collar teriyaki and an interesting dessert of stacked green tea crepes with ginger ice cream. The dinner probably merits its own blog, but since I don't have much time and I go off tangent a lot of times, anyway, I thought I would just mention it here.