THERE is nothing funny about Peter Shaffer’s play Equus, the one about a boy who blinds horses, but there was a joke going around when it first opened on Broadway – that the British audiences thought it was a play about cruelty to horses, while the American audiences thought it was about cruelty to psychiatrists.

I saw the play first at its opening at the National Theatre in 1973, and since then have seen it a number of times, in both professional and amateur productions, but never until this new working by director Lindsay Posner have I seen so clearly the “other people” in the action. We now watch this harrowing play through the eyes of the parents of “monster” children who have committed unimaginable crimes of cruelty, and through the eyes of the professionals who must deal with them. And also, thanks to the brilliance of Martin Dysart (movingly played by Toby Stephens), from the perspective of Alan Strang, a strange, isolated young man in love with the idea, the smell, the taste, the sound and the feel of horses.

Most young children have favourite stories, ones, often with accompanying noises, that they want their parents to read to them over and over again. Alan’s was the New Testament, passionately recreated by his teacher mother to express her religious fervour. Alan lived in a house full of conflict, with an atheist father given to talking in catch phrases, disapproving of television and constantly aware of his social inferiority.

Peter Shaffer based his play on a real court case, in which a teenaged boy blinded horses. The playwright imagined a scenario in which this horrifying act could be explained not as the dangerous behaviour of a criminal lunatic, but as a response to a series of circumstances which would not be repeated. In so doing, the life of Dr Dysart is dissected and the understanding of passion, of belief, idolatry, shame, desire and hope are flayed. The beloved horses may be blind, but the eyes of the audience are opened.

This extraordinarily powerful production, which opened in London and has its only provincial stop at Bath until 25th July, was designed by Paul Farnsworth, with lighting by Paul Pyant and sound and music by Adam Cork. The movement is directed by James Cousins, and the horses, on stage almost throughout the entire action, are performed by dancers.

At the centre of the story is Alan, mesmerisingly played by Noah Valentine. He captures the nervous, pleading belligerence of this damaged teenager, immediately spotting the unhappiness and disappointment in the life of the doctor sent to “cure” him by an unusually astute and sensitive magistrate (beautifully underplayed by Amanda Abbington). His parents(Emma Cunniffe and Colin Mace) are real, easily recognisable people.

Peter Shaffer wrote more than a dozen varied plays, each exploring human relationships. This is perhaps his greatest, and tells a story that will never date.

GP-W