War Horse

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How far would you go to find a missing loved one?
How about if that loved one was four-legged?

That is the quest at the heart of the play War Horse. Albert Narracott (the wonderful Seth Numrich) bonds with a horse his father buys at auction. Boy and horse grow up together, and the first 1/2 hour of the play shows their burgeoning relationship. But then reality, in the form of World War One intrudes, and Albert's father sells Joey the horse to the British Army. When word reaches Albert that the officer who had vowed to care for Joey was killed in action, he runs away and joins the fighting in France with the sole purpose of finding his friend. After a number of (somewhat predictable) twists, boy and horse are reunited and return home. The book on which the play is based is apparently written from the horse's point of view, and some of the play seems to be that way also. While we watch Albert search for Joey, we also see the journey Joey takes through France, first as an English Cavalry horse ridden by Albert's cousin, then in the company of a German Cavalry officer who hates the war and disguises himself as a medical orderly and attempts to help a French woman and her daughter escape to Switzerland.

The cast of the show is quite large, and for the most part, the acting is good. While I could not fully sympathize with Albert's obsession for this horse, Seth Numrich made me care for the character. Elliott Villar as the German cavalry captain kept my attention whenever he was on stage, and his ambiguous feelings about the war were palpable. David Pegram as Albert's Army buddy was fun to watch, as was Alyssa Bresnahan as Albert's mother. But some of the actors were difficult to hear at times, and the Devonshire accents employed made for some tough going in spots.

But the big stars of the show are not the people, but the horses. The puppets are incredible works of iron, and are gorgeous. The puppeteers inside the frames do absolutely fantastic jobs of making the horses move realistically. While carrying actors on the back of the horses! A nice touch was that those handling the roan horse Joey were in rust colored shirts, and the black stallion Topthorn's handlers were all in black. The puppeteers inside the horses were invisible for the most part, but the one doing the head and neck movement was standing outside the frame and there were a number of times that I found that distracting. It looked to me as though a person was handling the horse, and had to remind myself that he was supposed to BE the horse. During some of the battle scenes, there were single handled horse puppets on the stage and those looked a bit odd. There are also some bird puppets on stage, with the funniest of the lot being a poor goose that is just trying to get into the house.

While the puppets were technical marvels, in the end, they did not save the show for me. I found it long, with a slow start and a number of drawn out scenes and folk song interludes that served little narrative purposes. And, I found it a bit annoying that (understandably) all the actors were speaking English (some with a bit of an attempt at German or French accents), but there are a number of points where people are talking at each other and keep saying that they don't understand the language that the other person is speaking. If this had been done once or twice, it might have been interesting, but the device is overused to the point that I just shook my head each time it happened. Finally, while there is a reunion of boy and horse and their return home, I can't really feel that the show has a happy ending. Too many people don't make it home. Yes, I know it is WWI, but I felt that there is a large amount of graphic violence and some of the deaths seem gratuitous and too "in your face" for my taste.

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Comments

[Haviva]

It's been a while.
Hey Mindy! It has been a while since I have read one of your blogs and commented. I saw something about this play on some television thing (maybe CBS News Sunday Morning) a few weeks ago, and I was equally impressed, but not impressed, by the horses. Glad to learn that I am not missing much. . . other than you!