THEATER REVIEW : Psychological Puzzler ‘Equus’ Rides Off in Search of Divinity : Center Stage Theater’s revival captures more of the daring than the success of Peter Shaffer’s haunting play.

British playwright Peter Shaffer gets a lot of mileage out of anecdotal curiosities.

Long before his mega-hit “Amadeus” (inspired by an unsubstantiated deathbed confession attributed to a senile rival composer who claimed to have murdered Mozart), Shaffer left hoof prints on Broadway with his psychological puzzler “Equus,” a drama based on the sketchy legend of a stable boy who blinded his horses for no apparent reason.

In each case, Shaffer made no claim to historical authenticity. Instead, he constructed and explored the possible mental states that might have resulted in the circumstances described in these stories.

Oddly enough, he ended up writing the same play.

Despite their surface differences, both “Amadeus” and “Equus” manage to find their way back to Shaffer’s signature obsession--the suffocating effect of so-called normality on the godlike dimensions of the human soul.

In each play, Shaffer’s recurring structural device is the use of a narrator hopelessly mired in comfortable mediocrity but self-aware enough to recognize that rare, authentic divinity when it manifests itself in others.

Whether that manifestation is in the effortless brilliance of Mozart or the tortured hallucinations of the inarticulate teen-ager in “Equus,” they share a mystical union with a more complete world that lies outside the polite social boundaries we accept without question.

In turn, their outsider status evokes the same kind of admiration and envy in Shaffer’s voyeuristic narrators. Just as his devout composer Salieri heard in the mouth of the lewd, ill-mannered Mozart the divine voice to which he himself aspired, the psychiatrist Dysart who chronicles “Equus” tells of the mystical wellsprings that erupt with unfiltered purity in the stable boy placed in his charge.

In many ways, “Equus” was the more daring and successful of the two plays, although its current revival at Santa Barbara’s Center Stage Theater captures more of the daring than the success.

Shaffer’s writing still assaults our complacency with its elliptical storytelling and haunting, poetic imagery. Dysart (Nicholas Leland) sees all too clearly his role as a modern-day high priest of mediocrity--trying to blunt the unique personal pain of each patient into socially acceptable numbness. His own recurring nightmare of presiding over ceremonial disembowelings in which he’s lost his faith is the closest he gets to the voice of his own inner divinity.

Unfortunately, Leland’s performance as Dysart never convinces us that this man is really forced into self-scrutiny by his encounter with young Alan Strang (Jason Love). His monologues are too full of swagger and bombast, and what should evolve as a systematic corrosion of cherished beliefs comes across as pretentious and indulgent instead.

As the boy, Love effectively evokes sullen defiance in his initial meetings with Dysart, but misses the mark in the role’s more demanding heights of Dionysian frenzy that explain Alan’s bizarre mystical association of horses, God and sexuality.

It’s up to director Greg Lee’s staging to convey Alan’s psycho-sexual mysticism. There’s no missing the point, especially in the portrayal of the horses by silent, slow-moving body-builder types wearing skeletal metal horse heads and little else. If you’re a fan of gladiator movies, this is the play for you.

True to the script’s confrontational intent, the production includes nudity and adult language; Theodore M. Dolas’ tasteful lighting and Michael Mortilla’s eerie musical effects help steer the tone toward cerebral rather than hormonal arousal.

Notable supporting performances include David Morris as Alan’s repressed, hypocritical father; Jamie Gina Olsen as the uninhibited girl whose flirtation unknowingly triggers Alan’s crisis of the psyche, and Leslie Gangl as the social worker who goads Dysart to “cure” the boy.

With less emphasis on Dysart’s brooding ruminations, the second act’s discovery and re-enactment of Alan’s crisis and loss of innocence moves briskly and proves far more engaging.

It also proves a loss of innocence for the audience as well--after what we’ve seen here, it will be hard to view the relationship between Wilbur and Mr. Ed in quite the same way again.

Details

* WHAT: “Equus.”

* WHEN: Through April 30, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.

* WHERE: Center Stage Theater, 751 Paseo Nuevo, Santa Barbara.

* HOW MUCH: $18.75 ($15.75 students and senior citizens).

* FYI: For reservations or information, call 963-0408.