{"id":1740,"date":"2019-02-28T00:15:59","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T00:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1740"},"modified":"2019-02-28T07:01:27","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T07:01:27","slug":"propwatch-the-hoof-pick-in-equus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2019\/02\/propwatch-the-hoof-pick-in-equus.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the hoof pick in Equus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The most fascinating tool on the Swiss army knife was surely the curved implement designed for scraping stones out of horses\u2019 hooves. Undeniably practical yet destined to sulk unused in most urban lives. Except in Peter Shaffer\u2019s Equus<\/em>, where it gleams forth to hideous effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ned Bennett\u2019s galvanic production for English Touring Theatre and Stratford East<\/a> sets it at the time of the 1973 premiere. As psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Zubin Varla) treats a teenage patient, Alan Strang (Ethan Kai) \u2013 teasing out the story of how Alan was enthralled by and then blinded the horses at a local stable \u2013 the production\u2019s props assemble like a toolkit of the 1970s and its discontents. So what\u2019s in the 1970s toolkit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cigarettes<\/strong>. In a 1970s production, they would probably go unremarked. In general, if characters didn\u2019t need their breath for Shakespeare or singing, they smoked. Everyone smoked, onstage and off. Harold Pinter puffed throughout his 1978 interview on tv\u2019s South Bank Show; \u2018there was so much smoke pouring up from the bottom of the screen,\u2019 wrote Clive James, \u2018that you began wondering if his trousers were on fire.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, you clock it when Zubin Varla\u2019s mahogany-voiced psychiatrist repeatedly lights up, twitching at each ciggie in the chain, trailing ash around the consulting room and dropping his dogends in a perfectly 70s mug made of smoked glass. What was once everyday is now an alarm-bell pathology. In Georgia Lowe\u2019s cleverly austere design \u2013 a space surrounded by pleated white curtains, as if the action was under observation \u2013 it isn\u2019t only the patient that\u2019s under scrutiny, but also the profession that is supposedly returning him to accepted ways of being that may themselves be quietly toxic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hoover<\/strong>. In the halcyon days before Dyson, when Britain still made things and cleaned up the mess afterwards, every home had an upstanding vacuum cleaner. Noisy, bumpy, growling passive-aggressively over the shagpile. Perfect for Syreeta Kumar\u2019s don\u2019t-bother-listening-to-me-I\u2019m-just-his-mother clatter as Alan\u2019s mum. She\u2019s deeply invested her son\u2019s wellbeing, yet as her husband starts to huff she reverts to chores. The 1970s were a decade of feminism, but for many liberation stretched no further than the hoover cord could reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sandcastles<\/strong>. A stretch of sand is a coastline, but sandcastles make it a beach. Holidays were measured in these devoted summertime constructions, whether ankle-high forts or crenelated wonders. Here, sandcastles bearing little paper flags whizz onto the stage, and immediately it\u2019s a summer holiday. They’re innocent pleasure in Alan\u2019s boyhood, though he immediately puts away childish things when a young man canters up on a horse and offers him a ride. Alan is held in an erotic compact between adult man and sweat-steaming horse hide. The sandcastles capture a simplicity that he leaves behind, as he digs into the morass of adolescence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tape recorder<\/strong>. Ooh, technology. The 1970s bloody loved technology. Harold Wilson lauded the \u2018white heat of the technological revolution\u2019 in 1963, but cultural revolutions don\u2019t take hold immediately. They\u2019re more continuum than convulsion. We hear about the swinging sixties, but changes in British society only became embedded during the 1970s. Dysart gives the wary Alan a tape recorder to confide in. Fitting the livid mess of the boy\u2019s memories onto magnetic tape seems clinical. Dysart\u2019s hospital isn\u2019t a cruel place \u2013 but in the anxious ethos of Shaffer\u2019s drama, any intervention in emotion can seem harsh. He opposes Alan\u2019s flare of fantasy to Dysart\u2019s grey-toned compromises, just as in Amadeus <\/em>he would contrast Mozart\u2019s knickers-to-the-wind genius with Salieri\u2019s mild dessert-based indulgences and polite facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hoof pick<\/strong>. It\u2019s kinked, glinting. And sharp, so sharp. Fits in the hand, but capable of such screaming damage. It catches the light (Jessica Hung Han Yun\u2019s design often dunks the stage in unwholesome shades \u2013 queasy yellows, metallic pinks \u2013 but she knows when to let white light wince along this neat metal tool). Bennett keeps the entire electrifying evening on a knife edge; the device designed for scraping clean a hoof can cut into a flailing imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All photos by The Other Richard<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most fascinating tool on the Swiss army knife was surely the curved implement designed for scraping stones out of horses\u2019 hooves. Undeniably practical yet destined to sulk unused in most urban lives. Except in Peter Shaffer\u2019s Equus, where it gleams forth to hideous effect. Ned Bennett\u2019s galvanic production for English Touring Theatre and Stratford […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[463,322,321,34,603],"class_list":{"0":"post-1740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-ned-bennett","9":"tag-props","10":"tag-propwatch","11":"tag-theatre","12":"tag-theatre-royal-stratford-east","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1740"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1746,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1740\/revisions\/1746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}