On Saturday, July 3rd, the Guild Hall production of Peter Shaffer's seminal play, EQUUS, closed after a brief, four week run. Directed by Tony Walton and starring a cast of wonderful, veteran stage actors from the New York theatre world, EQUUS was one of the great experiences of my professional life.

Shaffer himself attended many of our rehearsals, offering rewrites of stretches of dialogue in his award-winning drama. Shaffer had always been, by his own admission, a chronic rewriter of his work, often submitting changes to his greatest plays, such as AMADEUS, right up until the eleventh hour. The opportunity to meet, let alone rehearse, with Shaffer was both awesome and humbling.

EQUUS is a difficult piece to handle. I am pretty sure I never got it right once. I got pretty close on some nights. But the density of both Shaffer's ideas and words makes EQUUS a bear to wrestle with every night. Or, as I told Shaffer, it is like skiing a double black diamond run, staring down the treacherous slope each night, sensing I would likely wipe out along the way.

Shaffer's response? "I hope you find it thrilling on the way down, nonetheless."

Dysart: "I need, more desperately than my children need me, a way of seeing in the dark. What way is this? What dark is this? I cannot say it is ordained of God, I cannot get that far. I will, however, pay it so much homage. There is, now, in my mouth, this sharp chain. And it never comes out."

Thank you to Guild Hall in East Hampton, to our audiences and to our cast and crew for EQUUS.


(1)