Equus

April 27, 2008

Sunday morning. A lone goose honks overhead, circling North Asheville as though looking for something–probably the rest of Beaver Lake, which has been drained repeatedly and unnecessarily over the course of the year.

DJ and I hauled ourselves to Waynesville to see Equus at HART last night. I’d heard it was good, but I was really not prepared for how good it was. After a time I stopped saying "It’s better than the London production with Daniel Radcliffe," because people say that sort of thing all the time, but the fact is, it was. What London had in elegance and expenditure, Waynesville had in sheer virtuosity of acting. Steven Lloyd as Dysart was modulated, underplayed, professional, dodging the urge to melodrama detectable in each of the three other productions of this play I’ve seen. His British accent was perfect, and exactly tuned to play "posh" to Allen Strang’s convincing "working class." The horses were not only easy to look at but excellent and concentrated actors; Nugget was miraculously expressive, a horse and a god at once. The directing was superb in being all but invisible, which is to say, there was not a single mistake, nor a single moment when somebody onstage was not onstage. Adam’s Allen Strang was perfection. No gesture was off, no line delivered less than maximally; there was no instant when he did not inhabit the character fully and transcendently. I think it might be the best performance I’ve seen anywhere. Adam is a fully natural actor, untrained except by experience, and in no need of training. His task in the profession will be to remain unspoiled by other people’s ideas. I wish the evening could be frozen somehow, as an exhibit for producers and theater boards, for the money spent on the production could probably have come out of my monthly paycheck without my missing it, and yet a better evening of theater could hardly be imagined. I thought I didn’t like the play that much. Now I think I do. But, in some ways, the play is not for me. Though I am more cleverly socialized than Allen, I worship at midnight the wild god who has always swayed my heart, weeping and aflame, and the uses of the world have turned that emotion sometimes to anger or hatred, but never to neutrality.

Everyone was there, all hugging and asking after one another’s latest projects. I sound like an ass to myself for reapeating "I have a play opening In New York in three weeks." Drink for Stan’s birthday at the Usual afterwards.