Equus (play) Equus (play) Equus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses. Shaffer was inspired to write "Equus" when he heard of a crime involving a 17-year-old who blinded six horses in a small town near Suffolk. He set out to construct a fictional account of what might have caused the incident, without knowing any of the details of the crime. The play's action is something of a detective story, involving the attempts of the child psychiatrist Dr. Martin
Peter Shaffer was revived by Massachusetts' Berkshire Theatre Festival in the summers of 2005 and 2007, by director Thea Sharrock at London's Gielgud Theatre in February 2007, and on Broadway (in the Sharrock staging) in September 2008. The latter production, which ran in New York until February 2009, required the stableboy to appear naked; its star, Daniel Radcliffe, was still associated with the "Harry Potter" films intended for general audiences, and this led to mild controversy. Shaffer followed this success with "Amadeus" (1979) which won the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics' Award for the London production. This tells the