Saturday, 11 July 2009

WAR HORSE REVIEW AT NEW LONDON THEATRE, DRURY LANE

It is a rare beast that successfully manages to captivate ALL THREE of my children AND ME at the same time.

Michael Morpurgo's 1st World War children's novel (about a horse) has been turned into a fantastic theatre production and with the help of extraordinarily powerful puppetry, brings a story about the futility of war very much to life.

The animation of the bamboo framed horses provided by the human co-ordinators created incredibly expressive and realistic imagery, with intricate movements of precision - a mere toss of the head, or the flick of the tail meant that it wasn't long before we forgot about the controllers and began only to see the horse as a living, breathing being.





My children loved it, although my daughter thought it was a little too long.

Top marks from us then.

Although I observed one disgruntled theatregoer who left a comment on one of the reviews which amused me:

"War Horse was so bad I fell asleep. It's ridiculous how people can think that someone (or three) holding a horrendous excuse for a puppet is "stunning". The plot was so awful it was unbelievable, this performance has scarred me to the extent that I no longer wish to see another play".

Jack, Newcastle

1 comments:

MBNAD woman said...

It was fabulous. I sat on the edge of my seat and, when the horse was entangled in the barbed wire, I wept. The complete strangers next to me were weeping too.

I go with your top marks.