Horse power: Free-Rain unbridles Shaffer’s Equus
15 November 2025By NICHOLAS FULLER.
This article was originally published in the Canberra Daily website and Canberra Weekly magazine on 11 November 2025.
Half a century ago, Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play Equus “shocked audiences everywhere”, to quote the tagline for Sidney Lumet’s film adaptation.
It remains one of the most shocking works in modern theatre, one that “engages, provokes, and repulses”, says director Anne Somes, whose Free-Rain Theatre production opens at ACT Hub this week.
“It’s a very intense play,” Somes says. “It’s one of the best that Peter Shaffer has ever written. And it stands the test of time — it’s a theatrically powerful work.”
Inspired by an anecdote Shaffer heard about an act committed by a highly disturbed young man, Equus combines psychoanalysis with myth and worship.
Why should troubled 17-year-old Alan Strang (Jack Shanahan) — a stable hand who adores horses, and cares for them deeply — blind six of the animals? Child psychologist Martin Dysart (Arran McKenna) takes the youth under his care, but finds himself grappling with his own demons and doubts.
Equus was the second of British playwright Shaffer’s three great plays, written between The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964), which concerns the Spanish conquest of the Incas, and Amadeus (1979), about the fictitious enmity between Mozart and Salieri.
It won the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award; ran for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway; and was adapted for cinema in 1977, starring Richard Burton and Peter Firth. More recently, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe chose the play to launch his adult acting career and escape from the shadow of boy wizards.
Somes directed the play two decades ago; its “intellectual argument” and “poetic imagery” drew her back.
“It is a piece of literary writing… A work that is definitely worth seeing.”
Audiences will walk out of the theatre talking — and thinking — about it.
“It’s one of those plays that doesn’t answer questions; it gives you more questions, with answers that you have to try to find for yourself,” Somes says.
“How can a young boy do this inexplicable crime? Shaffer presents us with a reflection on senseless violence. We’ve only got to look at the world as it is now, even in our own backyard — it’s still so prevalent, and we can’t seem to escape any of that.”
The play concerns human longing for the numinous; the Dionysian id versus the Apollonian superego; the chaotic, destructive, liberating force of sexuality; our capacity for adoration and for cruelty; the harm domineering parents can inflict on sensitive adolescents; and what is lost or destroyed when someone is made into a ‘normal’ member of society.
“Dysart envies Alan’s passion for horses, and he then tries to make this young man normal,” Somes says. “What is normal? Who are we to determine what that is? We insist on social conformity; even now, we say people have to conform to particular viewpoints that society holds. … What are the things that you value in yourself and in others? How do you present as an individual, and in society?”
Somes’s minimalist staging is inspired by Stonehenge — a place of ritual and of sacrifice. She uses a two-tiered stage — a raised central platform surrounded on three sides by lower levels — to heighten the sense of ceremony.
The cast is always on stage — including the six Horses, performers wearing skeletal metal headpieces, abstract, geometric masks like a horse’s skull, held upright on harnesses.
“These are not domesticated, beautiful animals,” Somes says. “They’re majestic, but they’re threatening as well.” Shaffer specified that “any literalism which could suggest the cosy familiarity of a domestic animal — or worse, a pantomime horse — should be avoided”.
Equus marks Free-Rain Theatre’s 30th anniversary, and the company’s commitment to bringing classic, iconic plays to younger audiences, Somes says.
If early form is any guide, Equus will make a powerful showing. A 20-year-old videographer, unfamiliar with the work, filmed a promotional video — and it proved “an absolute revelation for him”, Somes says: “He sat there with his jaw on the floor.”
Equus, by Peter Shaffer, Free-Rain Theatre, ACT Hub, Causeway Hall, Kingston, 12 to 22 November. Tickets: $30 to $45. Online: https://www.freeraintheatre.com/production/equus/.
The play is R-rated (18+), for adult and sexual themes (mental illness and animal cruelty) and nudity.