Equus

Film adaptation

Shaffer adapted the play for a 1977 film starring Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Eileen Atkins, Colin Blakely, Joan Plowright, and Jenny Agutter, directed by Sidney Lumet. Unlike stage productions, where the horses are portrayed by human actors, often muscular men wearing tribal-style masks,[7] Lumet did not believe this could adequately be done in a film version "because the reality he [Alan] was being watched he was going to create the dilemma within him."[8]

Comparing the film to the play, English professor James M. Welsh felt using real horses in the film was understandable, but argued the outdoor scenes infringed on the "abstract theatrical design" that gave the play its creativity.[9] Welsh also felt the explicit depiction of the blinding was "potentially repulsive" and that "much of the spirit of the play is lost as a consequence."[10]


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