How is it possible to watch three people animating a rough-hewn body of a horse and entirely forget they are there? The magic of theatre and the breadth of our imagination.
Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse has been widely read, watched on the stage by over 8 million people worldwide and has been a roaring success as a blockbuster movie. What captivates audiences?
It’s a story of a relationship between a young boy from Devon and his horse as they are plunged into the horrors of World War I. It’s tale of a time gone by, the last attempts to combine cavalry with tank warfare. Today, horses might be spared on the battlefield, but the waste and devastation of war is sadly just as relevant.
War Horse has garnered a reputation for being brilliant, but even with that in mind, this heart-wrenching performance surpassed all of my expectations. It shows off every member of the creative and performance team working at their apotheosis.
Adapted by Nick Stafford with puppets created by Handspring Puppet Company, War Horse is a total art form. The intricately woven music, projections, lighting, sound effects and puppetry all transport you to a foreign field fighting a gruelling war.
An ever-changing space, the set is no more than a rip of paper across the back of the stage which can be projected upon, but in this black box, a spell is cast with just the key ingredients. Quickly moving, we find a door here, a wheeled-on gun there, a roll of barbed wire flung across the stage. It is the same approach taken with the horse puppets—too complex and large to try and create perfectly, the focus is on the flicking ears, swishing tale and the horse's breath. These minute but perfectly executed details make the horse feel like a live animal, flighty and fierce.
Original directors Tom Morris and Marianne Elliot did the impossible: creating a show that has a visceral impact with a puppet horse as a protagonist. Joey is able to hold the emotional heart of the story as Morris and Elliot find ways to spark our imagination from the first seconds. The audience collectively believes there is a horse onstage who is both spirited and vulnerable.
Farm boy Albert Narracot raises Joey with love from nervous foal to ridden partner. The story brings out the individuality and feelings of an animal—Joey fights to pull a plough for Albert because of trust and devotion, not through beatings or force. When a whip is raised to him by Albert's father and later Private Klausen, he fights back. It is when his spirit is broken and he finally gives up in the barbed wire that the audience's hearts break too.
880,000 British men died in World War I. One million horses were taken from Britain to France to support the war effort and only 62,000 returned home. These numbers are too large to really understand or connect to, but watching this story of one boy and his horse is a way in. Albert Narracot goes off to war to find his horse, but whilst there, loses all hope and just tries to survive. Joey makes it, but all around him, there are the devastated bodies of equines and humans. The creative team make the impossible work: they find a way to bring the scale and wastage of war to bear on a stage in Woking.
War Horse is the most successful play the National Theatre has ever made, and this new tour has lost none of the impact. Don’t miss it.