By John David Back 

Alternate titles:

–        Not Horsin’ Around

–        Neigh means neigh

–        This is not what Ginuwine meant in ‘Pony’

–        How Not to Love Animals, A Cautionary Tale

I don’t know how to talk about this performance without giving away key plot points, so if you want to be surprised, immediately (add link) buy tickets and go. You only have three more chances.

It’s been 24 hours since I saw the performance at the always-astonishing Warsaw Federal Incline Theater, and I’m still processing it. Looking through my notes from the show, most of which I scribbled in the dark, they reflect the madness we were seeing on stage. Christopher Carter, who played the troubled boy, was so jarringly good that I don’t know how to frame it. I’m trying to find a toehold in my own emotions.

The play surrounds a heinous, barbaric act that Alan (Carter) perpetrates: the blinding of six horses with a metal spike. The whole thing, all 2+ hours of palm-sweat-generating drama, centers on a psychiatrist trying to determine why. That doctor, Martin Dysart, is played by Mike Hall, who I recognized as a member of the OTRimprov group. It took me a minute or two to let myself slip into the scenario at the outset simply because the last time I saw him he was pretending to be in Die Hard in the Arnold’s courtyard.

If you knew God, Doctor, you would know The Devil
As the doctor digs into the psychosis of the boy, he starts to unravel a sexual, religious, repressive, and British set of issues that overlap and comingle and leave you wondering what in the world is broken inside this gaunt blond boy. The boy’s mother, played by Marth Slater, influences him heavily with Jesus and Bible talk during his formative years. We all know how that goes.

The play was dark, and moving, and disturbing. I cringed hard at a couple of places, and the culminating scene, when we finally learn the dark truth, had acid rising in the back of my throat. I was nervous, anxious, and slightly terrified. I cannot stress enough how good Carter was as the broken Alan Strang. If I had two weeks to let myself cool down, I’d see it again. It disappointed me mightily that the theater was perhaps 2/3 full. If people only knew the mark this performance would leave on them, it would be a packed house every night.

When I write a book about why Art finally made me lose my mind, I will dedicate an erratic and emphatic chapter to Equus at the Incline Theater.

Addendum:

I speculate that if you had been a huge Harry Potter fan, read nothing about this play, and gone to see it on Broadway, you probably would have had a nervous breakdown.

It’s hard to write phonetically, but it’s pronounced like Ek-woss. Or Ek-wuss. Or if you kind of said both of those sounds blended together. It’s just two syllables, if that helps.

For tickets to the remaining performances, click here.