War Horse

Tonight saw a break from the relentles gigging of the last couple of weeks to the more serene and civilised theatre-going of the National Theatre and the production of 'War Horse'.

I found it strangely moving and harrowing. The tale of young Albert who loves his horse, Joey, so much that he enlists in the army during the First World War to rescue him. He's raised Joey from a frightened colt to become a magnificent stallion, a horse fit for an officer and the officer is dramatically killed during the first battle. Joey is rounded up by the Germans and put to work pulling an ambulance and then a cannon, before tanks come on the scene and Joey runs wild through no-man's land...

The star of the production is Joey and Joey is a puppet. An eight feet tall puppet manipulated by three men but, strangely, it's easy to ignore the humans and see Joey as a horse, with all the gestures and twitches of a horse. Similarly his rival and then friend, Topthorn, a black stallion to Joey's chestnut colouring. Both are huge and very 'horse-like' but other horses in the production are more lightly drawn. There is also a little girl puppet and a comedy goose as well as swallows and a nasty crow that pecks at dead bodies on the battlefields. I *like* the goose.

The play gradually drew me in through the careful plotting, the excellent acting and the wonderful puppeteers. I was particularly taken with Thusitha Jayasundera as Albert's young mother who projected that right mix of pragmatic farmer's wife and woman who will take on the world for her men, a sympathetic character played very well with the universal cares and woes of mothers everywhere.

The staging was both simple and incredibly elaborate. A relatively bare stage for most of the production with atmospheric lighting and restrained use of props, presumably so that nothing took away from the glory of the horses. Lots of attention to detail from swallows flying on the sunny summer morning that opens the play to the death crows of the battlefield, little touches that show someone has really thought it all through and secured the funding to fulfill their vision.

It was also terrible. The horror that is war and the hell that was the First World War are stark. The petty rivalries of the farmers' extended family pale into insignificance after the first battle in France with the cavalry shot to ribbons and the dead men and horses littering the stage while we go back to Devon for Christmas 1914 when Albert gets a bicycle to make up for the loss of his magnificent horse. Then follows the degradation of Joey as he survives the first battle, the dehumanisation of the troops as some of them fight to hold onto their humanity and others don't, becoming automatons and puppets of their leaders themselves. This should be mandatory viewing for all our leaders.

It stirred memories and made me think of my Granda. He was a soldier in the First World War who lost an arm, wounded and delirious in no-man's land and saved by a young girl in a bombed farmhouse (rather similar to the second act in that respect). The things he must have seen (and probably done) don't bear thinking about and that's probably why he didn't speak about the war until his last few years and it was then that I got to know him a little.

One of my earliest memories of him is going with him to his allotment when I was about five on a sunny afternoon, wandering through the fields and he took me to see the horses. Granda had a way with animals and the horses were his friends - virtually everybody and everything was Granda's friend. He picked me up with his one arm and put me on the back of one of the horses and then walked away, turned and made a clicking sound with his mouth and the horse trotted over to him with me on it's back. I was terrified but all he was doing was giving me the thrill of my first (and only) horse-ride. He was a daft old bugger with a fondness for booze and I wish I'd known him better.