HOME AGAIN IN TRIUMPH
Can it really be nearly twenty years since this show about WW1 galloped into world theatre history on this stage? A maverick experiment with two life-size puppet horses (and let’s not forget the goose) it has been seen by nine million people in a dozen countries and several languages, including Mandarin. Its star Joey met Queen Elizabeth more than once. It released the long-neglected idea of puppetry back into the general idea of British theatre, from large shows like Life of Pi and The BFG to a new confidence in the skill which can suddenly make a scarf become a fox, or a doll a living child. The story is often told (beautifully in Nicholas Hytner’s BALANCING ACTS) of how the project began : Tom Morris’ fascination with the Handspring company in South Africa , family stories, , a children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo. Hytner’s rare mischievous bravura and his – subsidised – ability to let it grow from actors-with-boxes on their heads to a full commission of puppets from Handspring. Then came meticulously sensitive choreography of the horses’ movemet, and original direction by Morris and Marianne Elliott.
So much for history: how does this old show feel, now? Is brilliant, skilled, extraordinary athletic and taxing puppetry by three people inside each horse enough to move and overwhelm us in the age of AI and deepfake? Turns out ,yes it is: when Joey and Topthorne end the first half with a great leap over the terrible front line wire there was an immense shudder across the great room. But has the production been diluted by time and fashion, gussied-up for a fretful new generation? Absolutely not: Morris directs, and it still credits Toby Sedgwick’s choreography, Christopher Shutt’s sound ,Adrian Sutton’s music and the brilliant Rae Smith set. She frames the whole story in drawings, as if from a torn forgotten scrapbook, of Albert’s home village and then the fields and horrors of France. Animation complements but never overwhelms the solid reality of horses and people.
What I had forgotten, though, is the hugeness of spectacle: the moment when the foal Joey becomes adult, the galloping duel between him and the army horse Topthorne, quickly ending in tolerant fraternity with a bitter irony when humans are taking them into savage cold-steel warfare. I forgot about that terrifying spring for the wire into blackout, and the vast terror of the onstage (puppeteered) tank. Even the sketch-animation above becoming suddenly a vast troopship overwhelmed me for a momet=nt. Only a ship: but by this time we are so weirdly involved with the innocent perceptions of the country-bred Joey that it unnerves us, as if we too were horses.
So all the equine and puppetry magic is there, undimmed in two decades: a national treasure and global theatrical pride. As for the music – a wonderful, plain-truth Sally Swanson is the singer – Adrian Sutton’s blending of old songs , brass and woodwind and great harmonies from the immense ensemble is breathtaking. The human cast of course are new: Tom Sturgess a touching Albert, especially in the bleak trench scenes, and Stephen Beckett splendid as both his drunken, angry father and the furious German colonel. But the curious thing about this remarkable show is that actually, the story itself (Morpurgo adapted by Nick Stafford) is where the humans are concerned the weakest bit of it. It’s a children’s story version of WW1, and none the worse for it. That Albert should seek and find his familiar horse in the bitter chaos of the Somme is frankly not believable; the horsemanlike desertion of the German officer ((Manuel Klein) only a little more so. The point is that, like the reality of the gauze-cane-aluminium horses, it’s a dream we need to have. One we need to share, live in the big Olivier cavern, breathing together. So yes, it’s still magnificent.
nationaltheatre.org.uk. to 30 July
Rating 5 . Of course it is. But an extra design mouse, because I haven’t get got a specific puppetry-mouse.
theatreCat 