Revamped ‘Equus’ Exudes Emotional Power

As the psychiatrist in “Equus” at Deaf West Theatre, Phyllis Frelich gives a performance so vivid and intense it offers the illusion of speech. But in fact she never utters a word onstage.

Director Andrew Shea took a gamble in tackling Peter Shaffer’s Freudian tale about a hospitalized teenage boy, Alan Strang (a fiery Aaron Kubey), whose religious and erotic fixations led him to blind six horses. But the payoff is an elegant, emotionally wrenching adaptation of a famously difficult script.

The setting has been switched to Southern California from Britain, and Frelich plays Dr. Dysart, a role written for a male actor. Seamlessly introduced, the changes even encourage some new views of certain lines, including Dysart’s self-diagnosis of “professional menopause” that masks a darker spiritual uncertainty.

Shea’s brisk, spare staging enhances the script’s considerable power. Abstract lines of perspective disappear into an infinite horizon in Robert Steinberg’s minimalist set. Cast members do not exit but remain seated on either side of the stage, which allows for easier spoken interpretation of Frelich, Kubey and other actors using American Sign Language.

Yet Frelich is so marvelously expressive she needs little help. Garbed in a conservative chalk-stripe suit, the actress cuts a formidable figure; yet through exquisitely gauged gestures and expression she captures an interior anguish the lines only sketch. By the end, when Dysart’s detective work has resolved one mystery and created another, this astonishing actress has left the viewer speechless.

* “Equus,” Deaf West Theatre, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 24. $15. (213) 660-4673. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.