Toby Stephens Will Lead EQUUS Revival at Menier Chocolate Factory

The Menier Chocolate Factory has announced that Toby Stephens will play Dr. Martin Dysart in Lindsay Posner's major revival of Peter Shaffer's Equus, in its co-production with Theatre Royal Bath. The production opens at the Menier on 18 May, with previews from 8 May, and runs until 27 June, ahead of a run at Theatre Royal Bath from 13 to 25 July.

Joining Posner to complete the creative team are Paul Farnsworth (Set and Costume Design); Paul Pyant (Lighting Design); Adam Cork (Composer and Sound Design); and James Cousins (Movement Director).

Full casting will be announced shortly.

What prompts a 17-year-old boy to blind six horses?  This is the challenge presented to psychiatrist Martin Dysart as he delves into the psyche of his young patient Alan Strang to search for the answers and at the same time questioning whether the cure is more dangerous than the crime.  Peter Shaffer's brilliantly intriguing award-winning play is now considered a modern masterpiece.

Toby Stephens plays Dr. Martin Dysart. His theatre credits include Wendy and Peter Pan, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Coriolanus, Unfinished Business, Wallenstein, All's Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, Tamburlaine (RSC), Corruption (Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater), The Forest (Hampstead Theatre), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Trafalgar Studios), Oslo (National Theatre, Harold Pinter Theatre), Private Lives (Chichester Festival Theatre, Gielgud Theatre), Danton's Death (National Theatre), The Real Thing (The Old Vic), A Doll's House, Betrayal (Donmar Warehouse), The Country Wife, The Royal Family, Japes, A Streetcar Named Desire (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Ring Around the Moon (Lincoln Center), Phedre and Britannicus (Almeida at the Albery Theatre, BAM) and Tartuffe (Playhouse Theatre). His television work includes Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Season, A Cruel Love, The Split, Dodger, One Day, How to Date a Pleasure Seeker, Prisoner, Alex Rider, Summer of Rockets, Lost in Space, Black Sails, And Then There Were None, Vexed, Strike Back, Robin Hood, Wired, The Wild West, Jane Eyre, Sharpe's Challenge, The Best Man, The Queen's Sister, London, Cambridge Spies, Napoleon, Perfect Strangers, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and The Camomile Lawn; and for film, Giant, Marama, The Kashmir Princess The Morrigan, Journey, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, All Things To All Men, The Machine, Theatre of Dreams, Dark Corners, Severance, The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey, Die Another Day, Space Cowboys, Possession, The Announcement, Onegin, Photographing Fairies, Sunset Heights, Cousin Bette, The Great Gatsby, Twelfth Night and Orlando.

Peter Shaffer's (1926 – 2016) plays include Five Finger Exercise (Evening Standard Drama Award), The Private Ear/The Public Eye, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Black Comedy, The White Liars, Amadeus (Evening Standard Drama Award and Tony Award for Best Play), Yonadab, Lettice and Lovage and The Gift of the Gorgon.