Kicking a Dead Horse

Kicking a Dead Horse
By Sam Shepard
July 20, 2008 3:00 PM
Orch E6

And so, we round out this year's membership at The Public Theater. Before I get onto the play, which I didn't care for, I want to say that Stephen Rea was very good. His American accent was right on, and you could even pick him for a former Westerner. There was only one place where he dropped it a little, but considering how well he'd done the rest of the time, I think that was purposeful. Any problems I have with the play, are due to the writing, not to him, and not to the direction.

So…

The dead horse and the grave it lies beside are metaphors for something to do with America. I'm not sure what, as I don't have much of a head for metaphors, despite, yes, being a writer. However, as I watched "Kicking a Dead Horse", I wished that I did. Because it would make the play boring on a whole other level, aside from the dull-in-its-own-right-no-special-interpretation-needed level I was watching. Stephen Rea plays an American art dealer who decides to leave New York on a whim and return to the West, where he grew up. He and his favorite mare will have a jaunt across the Badlands, and return home to his wife.

Except the horse dies on the first day, leaving him stranded with no idea where he is.

So he talks. A lot. About his life. About things that matter to him, and don't matter much to us. He starts talking to himself, in another voice. At first I thought he was playing good conscience/bad conscience, then that he was channeling Quentin Crisp and had some kind of personality disorder (this one won out when Quentin forced him to throw the horse-related accoutrement into the grave). Then a girl came out of the grave and gave him his hat back. He was looking through his binoculars and singing a song about Crazy Horse rambling around until the "butchers cut him down", and didn't see her slinking around in her decidedly non-weatherproof nightie. Pretty sure the girl was his wife.

He probably killed her. She heads back underground once she puts the hat on him.

(Nothing in the play really says that, I'm just doing open interpretation for my own entertainment.)

He throws the hat back. I think he thought he got it himself (again w/ the split personality).

His big quest is to get the horse in the grave. He thinks it's not going on out of some kind of post-dead willpower. He gets all depressed about something…maybe his trip going wrong, and the horse being dead, and him having Quentin Crisp (who I now think is his wife) in his head, so he tells the horse he'll go in the grave with him, for company, and they can both be dead together.

Then he puts his tent up and prays for the first time, ever. He doesn't pray for rescue, but for the sun to be up. It works.

Things seem on the up and up. Then he decides he wants the hat back.

So he jumps in the grave to get it.

And horse falls on top of him.

Figures, doesn't it?

The End