Three Plays: Equus / Shrivings / Five Finger Exercise

by Peter Shaffer

Shaffer, Peter

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Sir Peter Levin Shaffer was an English dramatist, author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sh...

Reviews

[Skaistė · Rating 3 out of 5]

Equus – nuostabi, tamsi, įtraukianti pjesė, kitos – nevertos dėmesio ir laiko, perskaičiau, bet prasikankinau.

[Nikola Novaković · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Equus and Five Finger Exercise, gave up on Shrivings after a scene or two.

Equus is the famous Shaffer play I've heard so much about, and its themes are quite intriguing, but Shaffer's writing just strikes me as annoying and occasionally melodramatic. Also, the psychologist's dilemma in Equus about whether or not he should cure the disturbed boy who blinded six horses because it might just make him ordinary like everyone else struck me as strange at best.

Five Finger Exercise was beyond tedious and did not move me in any way. Shrivings started out the same way, so it was time to put the book down. There are far too many better books to read out there.

[Derek Bridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 4 stars goes for Equus, the standout play in this collection, and the only one people still perform. It's highly stylised and very dramatic. But, by allowing the psychiatrist to break the fourth wall, it supports an exploration (a la Clockwork Orange) of whether interventions to prevent violence may also take away a person's essential life force. By contrast, Five Finger Exercise is more conventional (how the newcomer disrupts the group dynamic) and Shrivings (in which a visitor deliberately provokes a pacifist to violence) has too much speechifying, I think.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

A huge disappointment. Five Finger Exercise and Shrivings have absolutely nothing to recommend them. Terrible dialogue and unbelievable characters. Equus at least has a more challenging theme and Shaffer makes more of an effort to dramatise the story. Still something less than a masterpiece though, in my view.