Adapted by Nick Stafford from the novel by Michael Morpurgo
National Theatre, Michael Harrison, Fiery Angel and Playing Field
The Lowry, Salford
September 18-28, 2024; 2 hr 35 min
(also Sunderland Empire, November 5-16; Liverpool Empire, April 8-19 2025; Leeds Grand Theatre, August 19- September 6 2025)
The Great War, so recently still in living memory, is now becoming distant for us. The veterans have all been gone a decade or more, while those who knew them remain and recount the stories they told.
War Horse is one such account. It was first a novel by Michael Morpurgo, written after a fireside chat with a gentleman who had recounted his experiences on the Western Front now more than 100 years ago. To capture the universality of the horrors of war, and the desperation and suffering of all sides, Morpurgo wrote the novel from the perspective of Joey, a farm horse sold into war - one of the million just from the British side, most of whom would not return.
It was an extraordinary challenge then for the National Theatre to breathe life into an animal protagonist without words, but through experimental puppetry by the Handspring Puppet Company, and some wonderful puppeteer actors, Joey was created with aluminium and mesh, incredible movement and sound, and paired with his loving owner Albert, as well as a few other companions in different uniforms through his journey.
For our performance on Sunday afternoon Tom Sturgess starred as Albert, but the show was stolen by Joey: Rianna Ash (Joey's head), Chris Milford (his heart), Thomas Goodridge (his hindquarters). With puppeteers in plain sight, the theatre acknowledges their presence as actors, and yet by the end of the show the relationship between Joey and his humans (English, German and French) was such that it was almost impossible not to believe in the character as a living, breathing creature with his own emotional centre, in reaction to the madness of the world around him.
With beautiful integral projections of drawings by Rae Smith, animated by ‘59’, new folk-song stories, written by the inimitable John Tams and sung for us by Sally Swanson, an epic score by Adrian Sutton and deeply creative atmospheric lighting designed by Rob Casey after Paule Constable, there is something uniquely theatrical about this production while aspiring to an almost cinematic realism. But it is the theatre here that wins out.
Where characters are brought to life from sticks and cloth, with their operation in plain sight, we must actively engage our own imaginations to believe in their being. So in becoming co-creators in this war horse’s existence, we are deeply invested in his relationships and his outcome. We see the horrors of war through the eyes of Joey, an animal we brought into being ourselves, and so it hits harder.
As my 11-year-old summarised, this show is amazing because it puts emotion into things that don’t really have emotion, and makes us believe that they do. But really the emotion, and the character of Joey himself, is all ours.
As director Tom Morris declared: "Audiences create theatre. We’re leaning into that."
More info and tickets here
