Comfort • George
Takei as Martin Dysart leans over Trieu
D. Tran, who plays Allan Strang in “Equus,” after
the 17-year-old character collapses
after a fit of hysteria. Michael Lamont
  
Horsey • Top: Alan (Trieu D. Tran) relives memories
of his first experience with a horse. His mother (Dian Kobayashi) and his
father (Alberto Isaac) look at his scraped knee while the horse’s rider
(Wesley John) tries to get the horse, Trojan, under control. Bottom: Harry
Dalton (Nelson Mashita) shows Alan how to take a stone out of the horses
hoof while fellow stable hand Jill (Cheryl Tsai) watches. Michael Lamont
Los Angeles’ East West players present ‘Equus’
By Jamie Rowe
Online Forty-Niner
Editor in Chief
“
Prince begat Prance… and Prance begat Prankus! And Prankus begat
Flankus! … Flankus begat Spankus. And Spankus begat Spunkus the great,
who lived three score years!.. And Legwus begat Neckwu. And Neckwus begat Fleckwus,
the King of Spit. And Fleckwus spoke out
of his chinkle-chankle!… And he
said, ‘Behold — I give you Equus, my only begotten son!’”
Sound like the Bible gone horsey? Good, it should. The East West Players, an
Asian-American theatre troupe dedicated to casting Asian-Americans in leading
roles to show off their versatility, produced a stunning performance of Peter
Shaffer’s “Equus.”
This play is a glimpse into the mind of a 17-year-old boy driven to stabbing
out six horses’ eyes after experiencing embarrassment during a sexual encounter.
The boy, Alan Strang (Trieu D. Tran) is brought to psychiatrist Martin Dysart
(George Takei of Star Trek fame) by Hesther Salomon (Jeanne Sakata), a court
official seeking refuge for Strang.
Dysart begins his analysis of the boy and discovers he has a fascination with
horses that goes beyond fanatical and into religious. Blending the stories his
extremely Christian school-teacher mother reads to him from the Bible with his
first experience with a horse, Alan creates a relationship based on the worship
of Equus, a god found in all horses, a god who sacrifices himself for the comfort
of humans. He creates passages such as the one above and ritualistically repeats
them at night, just before putting in his chinkle-chankle, or bit, and beats
himself with a wooden hanger.
Through his interactions with Strang, Dysart reveals his own mental anguish,
including dreams of carving up children during the Greek Classical period. This
is where Takei really shines. His voice perfectly fits the stuffy, yet stifled
character. While his monologues about being normal and changing people seemed
drawn out and unnecessarily long, no other actor could have played this part
better.
In addition to his voice, Takei moved as a psychiatrist in an English mental
hospital would. He had a deliberate walk, as if every step was the proper way
for a doctor of his kind. While some might argue he seems too old to play this
part, he pulled it off smashingly.
His counterpart, Tran, was just as spectacular if not better. Playing both the
petulant child (ranging from ages 6 to 12) and the practically raving lunatic
teenager is no easy feat. Tran flowed from age to age as Dysart encouraged Strang
to relive and act out his memories of horses, his job at a machine shop and the
night of the blinding, composed of fellow stable hand, Jill (Cheryl Tsai), taking
him to a porno flick where he ran into his father in the theater and later his
inability to have sex with her while in the stables, Equus’ holy ground.
Even more amazing was the intensity Tran provided to the end of the play when
he leapt in a fit of lunacy around the stage, completely naked, stabbing out
the horses’ eyes. I have only seen such aerobatics from a kitten chasing
a butterfly.
Six men wearing horses’ heads shaped by metal wire and shoes with four-inch
lifts with horseshoes at the bottom played the horses. While they did not follow
the stage directions from the script, the actors’ performances created
a sense of six live, huge horses in the 240-seat theater through the stamping
of their feet.
The biggest detraction from the cast’s amazing performance were Alberto
Isaac and Tsai’s accents. Schaffer is an English native so it is fitting
for the actors to use an English accent; however Tsai was the only one to use
it, while Isaac appeared to be faking a Scottish one. Their accents would have
worked well had all the actors used an English accent, but as the rest of the
cast spoke with an American accent, the effectiveness was lost.
This is an incredibly intense play dealing with what is normal in society, the
effects parents have on their children and the inner god in all of us. It is
well worth the $40 to sit in the orchestra seating to see this cast perform “Equus.”
Tickets range in price from $10-65 and are available by calling (213) 625-7000
or by visiting http://www.eastwestplayers.org. Equus will be running through
Dec. 4 at the East West Players theatre in Los Angeles.
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