ManicDDaily

I had the good fortune to see Warhorse last night, a play that shows a slice of the horrors of World War I through the story of a horse and his boy. Based upon the children’s book by Michael Marpurga, as adapted by Nick Stafford, the play is, well, very sentimental in the manner of almost all art that focuses upon the bonds between humans and animals, playing powerfully upon the heart and tear ducts. The emotional force of the story is compounded by the horror of the truth of World War I, the devastation of both the humans and animals caught in its web. (The program notes that 8 million horses died in World War I, as armies learned that a calvary was no match for machine guns, barbed war, tanks.)

One wishes, at times during the performance, that some of the sentiment–the “Lassie” elements of the story–were toned down. Even so, the production is extraordinary–genius found in life-sized puppets–horses, animated by three handlers at a time, whose ghostly and yet matter-of-fact arms and legs and wonderfully subtle but emotive faces spirit the horses across the stage, whinnying, snuffling, hoofing, rearing, stomping, fly-whisking, trotting, being ridden, being shot at, screaming, dying. One loses all consciousness of the puppeteers; one falls in love with the horses.

The lighting, set, costumes, all production values, are fantastic, bringing a sense of a no man’s land (no horse’s land either) palpably to the stage.