WAR HORSE | UK TOUR @ FESTIVAL THEATRE, EDINBURGH
★★★★★
‘Thirteen years on, the magic is still there…’
A family at war. A country at war. A world at war. A horse at war. One million horses travelled from Britain to France in the Great War, just 62,000 returned. Based on Michael Morpurgo’s novel of the same name, War Horse is the tale of one of them – Joey.
It was in 2012 that Joey charged from his then West End stable, the New London Theatre (now the Gillian Lynne), to gallop across the UK for the first national tour of War Horse. Some 13 years on, his journey continues to thrill, astonish and regularly move audiences to tears in venues around the UK and Ireland.
Other than Joey, the story revolves around the Narracott family, son Albert, mother Rose, and father Ted. When Ted recklessly purchases a foal at a ridiculously inflated price just to spite his brother, 16-year-old Albert quickly falls in love with the animal. A hunter, developed for riding, Joey is an expensive if useless addition to the stock of the Devonshire farming family. So, with the outbreak of World War One, Ted’s sells Albert’s beloved horse to the Cavalry. Shipped off to France Joey is soon caught up in enemy fire. It’s the start of an extraordinary journey for both Joey and Albert who, despite his young age, embarks on a treacherous mission to find Joey and bring him home.
And so the lights come up on National Theatre’s acclaimed production as the ensemble gather on Rae Smith’s inventive set, a now familiar black box affair sporting a slash of white onto which drawings and animations bring the Devon countryside, wartime docklands, battlegrounds and horrors of war to life.
A masterful combination of drawings, projection, puppetry, shadow work and immaculate ‘horse choreography’, War Horse is visually stunning, and while the life-size adult Joey may no longer make his entrance through the auditorium as he once did to rippling delight, when he does make his entrance, in a golden flash, it’s every bit as impressive, if not more so as the reaction is instant and communal, a magical moment of theatre rightly greeted by instantaneous applause.
The majestic beauty and power of South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company’s creations, not just Joey but the equally commanding Topthorn, remain the mesmerising jewels in the crown of this production, the three puppeteers that bring each horse to life quickly disappear into the fibres and fabrics of their charges, transformed into the head, heart, sinew and muscle of the living, breathing beasts.
Morpurgo’s storytelling, adapted by Nick Stafford, deftly avoids any sentimentality yet still tugs at the heartstrings, never missing a trick to trigger a lump in the throat, a smile, a laugh or even a tear or two, while Tom Morris’ direction keeps the pace steady. If the current ensemble is perhaps less nuanced than previous tours, that doesn’t prevent this production packing the expected emotional punch, much of which is due to the performances of those playing the Narracotts; Owen Dagnall’s Albert is pitch perfect, capturing the bond of boy and horse with a truth that resonates throughout. Similarly, Jo Castleton as his ever-loving mother and Karl Haynes as his drunken father both give empathic performances that evoke sympathy, albeit for very different reasons. Together, they provide the soul of a captivating evening of theatre.
Tour dates and tickets here.
