Griffin Kelly and Joey Stromberg (Photo by Cooper Bates)
Reviewed by Socks Whitmore
Echo Theater Company
Through May 24, 2026
RECOMMENDED
Griffin Kelly (Photo by Cooper Bates)
An unconventional love story is taking the stage in Atwater Village; Echo Theater Company presents the world premiere of Olivia DuFault’s For Want of a Horse, a comedic and complicated look into the world of zoophilia.
Bonnie wants to be supportive of her husband Calvin’s unusual desires, so she decides she’s ready to open up their relationship. There’s only one problem: Calvin’s new partner is a horse named Q-Tip. Calvin identifies as a zoophile (a person who experiences a sexual attraction to non-human animals), and after years of feeling repression and shame about his desires, he finally feels empowered by fellow “zoos” like his friend PJ to express his feelings to his “marefriend.” However, when his wife earnestly tries to understand by bearing witness, they both must wrestle with the moral implications of their “progressive” new relationship dynamic. Meanwhile, unheard by her human companions, Q-Tip soliloquizes at length with her own thoughts. Inspired by Edward Albee’s The Goat, For Want of a Horse takes an absurdist and sincere approach to examining interspecies attraction, functional relationships, and the treacherous path from empathy to enabling.
At the heart of the play’s humor is the juxtaposition of Q-Tip’s seemingly deep levels of introspective thought against her obsession with apples and other simple horse instincts. The inability of Calvin and Bonnie to hear Q-Tip’s dialogue makes for excellent theater and a humorous meditation on what horses really think about when we interact with them. Griffin Kelly is perfectly cast as the titular love interest; once seen speaking only in “meows” at the 2023 Hollywood Fringe in her solo show Two Cats on a Date, this seasoned actor skillfully embodies the mane shakes, headbutts, and huffing snorts of a horse. Q-Tip’s costume is minimal but effective, preserving Kelly’s humanity in a way that brings humor to the staging of the saucier scenes between Q-Tip and Calvin. The use of belts to represent a bridle is a particularly striking choice because of the way it hints at kink culture.
As the events of Calvin, Bonnie, and Q-Tip’s relationship unfold, audiences are likely to find themselves wondering what the metaphor is. DuFault’s script takes a taboo subculture and draws fascinating comparisons to subjects we might be more inclined to empathize with, while simultaneously calling into question whether these equivalencies can be made at all. Calvin journeys from self-hatred to acceptance around instincts he has no control over by finding a community that understands him and experiencing liberation from the ability to be himself — a sympathetic arc engineered to elicit the audience’s understanding. At one point, Calvin’s friend PJ even hints at a desire to be born in an animal body, drawing potential parallels to trans or otherkin experiences; when PJ and Calvin discuss the difference between practicing bestiality and being a “real zoo,” it echoes real world debates about the line between sexual kinks and gender identity. Bonnie struggles with wanting to live by her values as an open-minded person, both with her husband and his choices and as a pre-school teacher with a sexually deviant 5-year-old girl — but she also expresses disgust at the comparison of queer experiences to sex with animals. How can an animal consent to something it doesn’t understand? Did her compassion make her complicit in harm to others?
For Want of a Horse addresses mature sexual themes in an explicit (although non-graphic) manner. It may leave your moral compass spinning, but it wants you to understand: “She’s not a metaphor, she’s not an allegory — she’s a horse.” For better or for worse, this play is about exactly what it says it is.
Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theater, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Fri.-Sat. & Mon., 8 pm; Sun., 4 pm; thru May 24. https://echotheatercompany.com. Runtime: one hour and 25 minutes with no intermission.
