National Theatre UK and Ireland Tour 2024/2025
Grand Opera House, Belfast – 4 to 15 February 2025
Based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, adapted by Nick Stafford. In association with Handspring Puppet Company.
Almost 20 years after its 2006 world premiere, this National Theatre touring production War Horse has lost none of its power to thrill and astonish. During that time, most critics have seen it at least once, many have seen it multiple times. But, for a variety of unavoidable circumstances, this writer eventually caught up, for the first time, with what is still a theatrical phenomenon, in the magnificent surroundings of Belfast’s Grand Opera House.
Something there is about the contrast between the ornate, Victorian splendour of Frank Matcham’s pleasure dome and the stark turn-of-the-century setting of Michael Morpurgo’s novel that feels like a satisfyingly vintage fit.
When, in 2005, director Tom Morris approached Morpurgo about adapting War Horse for the National Theatre’s main stage, the idea seemed absurd. When he then suggested bringing on board the South African puppetry and performance company Handspring to recreate a horse as the central character, the prospects of success seemed even more remote. But Morris stayed true to his vision and in 2006 assembled a creative team whose collaboration and sharing of ideas would turn a wild notion into a theatrical miracle, which has since played to over 8 million people the world over.
Some ten million human souls were lost in the so-called Great War of 1914 to 1918, a bloody, pointless conflict led by incompetent generals and clueless politicians. Alongside the multitude of largely untrained young soldiers, who were called up, were a million horses, rustled up from fields and farms up and down the country to join the war effort.
It is a tribute to the vision, the technical facilities and skills of the Grand Opera House team, that this epic-scale piece has been brought to Northern Ireland audiences and staged in a manner that captures both the rural charm of the English countryside and the harrowing spectacle of the Somme trenches. At the centre of it all are a boy and his horse, who grow, play and suffer together in the name of global peace and community harmony.
As young Albert Narracott, Tom Sturgess skilfully portrays a gormless farm boy whom is seen to mature into a courageous soldier, forming an instinctive partnership with a skittish colt bought by his drunken father and subsequently carted off to war. Innocent and green about the filthy business of battle, Albert leaves his home to follow his heart into the muck and blood of the poppy fields, never doubting that he will track down Joey, his best friend.
Through the vehicle of Morpurgo’s touching story, the large cast and crew movingly touch hearts and minds, without a hint of sentimentality. But for sheer spectacle and meticulous attention to detail, loudest applause is reserved for Handspring’s brilliantly realistic recreation of the noble animals, uncomplainingly dragging gun carriages across muddy fields and leaping fearlessly into rows of barbed wire fences, which tore them to shreds.
The piece is not entirely without flaws. After a lengthy but eventful first act, Act 2 is shorter, but stuffed with extraneous padding and inconsequential dialogue. What offsets that, however, is the visual spectacle, achieved by stunning animation and projected images, which navigates a path from small English village to the horrors of tanks and guns and military charges in a faraway land. It leaves audiences in no doubt, then as now, that war is an unspeakably terrible thing.
Given the perilous times in which we are living and the atrocities we see, day after day, on our television screens, War Horse is as relevant and important a piece of theatre as it was on the day it emerged as a crazy twinkle in its director’s eye.
Further information: http://www.goh.co.uk
The Even Hand 