Powerful portrait

Dramaworks’ “Equus” remains a searing work 45 years after its debut.

Before the internet brought us a daily parade of unimaginable acts, before teens with guns brought deadly violence into schools, Peter Shaffer’s searing play “Equus” took a hard look inside the mind of a disturbed young man.

Although the shocking drama debuted in London 45 years ago and won a best-play Tony Award two years later, “Equus” remains a masterwork and a mainstay of regional theaters. And with the thenteen “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe playing the obsessive boy, the play made it back to London in 2007 and returned to Broadway in 2008.

Palm Beach Dramaworks has just opened a new and masterfully executed production of “Equus” directed by J. Barry Lewis. Starring Peter Simon Hilton as psychiatrist Martin Dysart and Steven Maier as his 17-year-old patient Alan Strang, the play contemplates an unimaginably horrific act — the teen has blinded five horses with a hoof pick — then digs down, layer by layer, into the factors that led him to that torturous cruelty.

Dysart, a man in a passionless marriage who also wonders if he’s going through “professional menopause,” has been asked by his magistrate friend Hesther Salomon (Anne-Marie Cusson) to try to get the boy to open up.

The doctor undertakes that process at a psychiatric hospital in southern England, at first getting nothing but defiantly sung TV ad jingles in response to his questions. Then slowly, though games and hypnosis and reenactments and conversations with those who know the patient, the mysteryshrouded portrait of a troubled teen comes into sharp focus.

Shaffer probes the roles of Alan’s parents: Father Frank (John Leonard Thompson), an atheist and stern disciplinarian who refused to allow TV in the house, and mother Dora (Julie Rowe), a teacher and deeply religious woman, have clashed repeatedly over their son.

Not at all dated, “Equus” has stimulated the creative imaginations of several generations of theater artists, including the Dramaworks production. And as the world seems to turn out more and more angry young men who cross the line from roiling anger into violence, the insights “Equus” provides into a damaged psyche seem ever more invaluable.

SAMANTHA MIGHDOLL/COURTESY Steven Maier as Alan Strang kneels before Domenic Servidio as the majestic horse Nugget in Equus at Palm Beach Dramaworks.