So I think I have decided why I like plays so much.
.
Here is the thing with plays. First, they are not bloody. I can't imagine seeing the SAW movies. I know it is all fake, hell when I lived with Greg I helped to set up fake severed heads for Stripped to Kill, but I still don't like it.
.
Plays don't have much in the way of blood. And they refuse to come out and tell you how to feel (I'm looking at you Speilberg). Plays let emotions hang out and you react as you react. Or not. Plays, more than movies, speak in riddles. You accept it because of the limitations of the medium. We demand movies be more real, more "honest". Only I think they aren't, they are only more manipulative. Personal preference I guess.
.
Back to Equus.
.
What I knew about Equus going in was what almost anyone knows. Harry Potter nudes up and gouges out the eyes of some horses.
.
That is true and yet so very very little of the play. I was amazed not only at Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliff, but by the playwright, Peter Schaffer. The questions he raises about human frailty and self-questioning, even in throwaway moments were beautiful. And to watch Richard Griffiths tackle them is an honor.
.
Richard Griffiths is horribly fat. Horribly. The minute he walks on stage that is all you can see. By the second minute you never see it again. His voice, his eyes (even under those furry eyebrows) and his emotions blind you to his girth. It's not that it is no longer important, it is almost like you can't even see it.
.
As for Daniel Radcliff - his angry voice is his angry voice. At first it conjured up Harry Potter screaming a spell. But the longer the play went on the less you remembered anything outside of the play, Harry Potter included.
.
It's not far to say, did you like the play? Because I don't know if I did. But I was transformed by it. I was inspired by it. I was made happy to have emotions and give voice to the afterwards. I was challenged and changed by the play.
.
Yes, I guess I liked it.