In the Berkshires, three productions explore life and love with passion (July 2005)

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In the Berkshires, three productions explore life and love with passion. By Ed Siegel from Boston Globe [July 21, 2005]
articles.boston.com/2005-07-21/news/29221054_1_...


STOCKBRIDGE -- Passion is one of those things in life we all want. Or
do we? What if the price of passion is to lead a life without money,
status, or any of the things we say we'd sacrifice in the name of love
and happiness?

That's the issue facing several characters in three productions in the
Berkshires: A psychiatrist envies his patient's passion in ''Equus,"
Petruchio vies for the heart of Kate in ''The Taming of the Shrew,"
and two couples grope for the gold in ''The Wharton One-Acts."

Peter Shaffer's ''Equus" walks a thin line between profundity and
cliche. A psychiatrist who goes on and on about his jealousy of a
young man who blinded six horses with a metal spike? It can be a bit
much, especially when the actor playing Dr. Dysart, Victor Slezak, is
so unconvincing.

And yet there's so much else that's right with Shaffer's writing and
the Berkshire Theatre Festival production that the 1973 play still
works. In fact, given the rise in turn-of-the-millennium
fundamentalism around the world, the religious issues in ''Equus" seem
fresher today than ever, with true believers of all kinds seeking a
state of rapture and nonbelievers trying to make sense of things in a
dispassionate way.

Randy Harrison, a star of Showtime's ''Queer as Folk," is one of the
primary reasons for BTF's success. As the young man who turns on the
horses he loves, Harrison produces a finely etched portrait of
sublimation. He transfers his passion for Jesus to one for equus and
other sources of ecstasy. What he conveys on an even deeper level is
how innocence can so quickly turn to guilt. His religious mother and
stern father have made stirrings of any sort seem sinful to him.

Dysart is the man assigned to lead him back to ''normalcy" following
his criminal act, but Dysart's passionless life makes him wonder
whether taking away someone else's desire is worth the price.
Unfortunately, Slezak looks and sounds as if he has watched the film
version starring Richard Burton too many times. Burton pulled off the
difficult part; Slezak just seems silly.

Director Scott Schwartz fills the stage with Jungian masks and
expressionistic staging as he explores the Freudian dangers of
repression and transference that Shaffer details in the sсript. The
result is riveting, particularly when the six horsemen prance about
the stage with such sensuality.