WAR HORSE
DIRECTOR: Alex Sims
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR: Katie Henry
CAST: Matt Addis, Lee Armstrong, Karen Henthorn, Steven Hillman, Peter Ash, Bob Fox, David Fleeshman
VENUE: Artscape Theatre
UNTIL: January 4
RATING: ****
WHAT a proud moment at the War Horse premiere in Cape Town when Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler took a bow to a standing ovation. They were not the only ones who got a bit choked up at the import of the horses’ homecoming. It has been a long time coming, but oh so worth it.
The puppets – horses and assorted birds – elevate this particular musical theatre production above its otherwise simple depiction of the devastating effect of WWI on people and animals, to theatre magic.
The moment when baby Joey is whisked away, only for adult Joey to charge onto stage to trot around in sheer abandon, elicits excited applause – probably every time, no matter where in the world.
The staging (which incorporates videowork, excellent lighting and cleverly used props) and in particular the puppets, is what makes it so mesmerising – you are caught up in the shared emotional life of the horse and his boy. You feel the exhilaration of the pair galloping across the countryside, the sadness when their friends die and the devastation of privation as the horse is maltreated but still does what the humans demand of it.
We follow Joey the horse as he is raised in the Devon countryside and then taken across the Channel to face the horror of war in Europe. All the time his owner, and friend Albert (Armstrong) searches for him while himself serving as an infantryman.
The first time I spoke to Jones and Kohler about War Horse was in 2011 when it was about to debut on Broadway, before the Handspring Puppet Company received a special Tony Award for their puppetry. The sheer excitement coming down the phone line from New York intrigued me, so when I was in London the next year I watched War Horse at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane and found myself entranced by the artistry.
Artscape Theatre’s proscenium arch makes the staging of the show slightly different to the London theatre – but it is still highly effective. The Cape Town stage now juts out far enough to create foxholes between the audience and the stage’s edge for the soldiers to hide in during the second half.
Sitting so close to the front in Cape Town, the swallows now flew overhead, the gunshots were deafening and details like the crows’ glassy stares apparent. This adds to the realism. Sitting further back in Drury Lane, though, gave me a sense of the huge scope of the staging – the tank and the field of dead – creating alarm and melancholy in equal measure.
Researching stories about the process of creating the puppets and the costly process of bringing War Horse to South Africa (thanks RMB and Pieter Toerien) over the past four years has made me appreciate even more the sheer effort that went into the production.
Michael Morpugo’s source novel is told from the viewpoint of Joey, and using the life-sized puppet gives us the horse as a horse, rather than a person disguised as a horse. While a person can very realistically pretend to die on stage, when the puppets die here, they do so for real, leaving behind literally unanimated carcasses of cane and leather.
Faced with such enchantment on stage, the humans do well to be simply the people who live and die as humans do.
There is a constant refrain running through the show, courtesy of a singing narrator who provides background context – “only remembered for what we have done”. This line from John Tams’s folk song is in reference to the soldiers who died in WWI. But if War Horse is the only thing that Jones and Kohler are remembered for in time to come, it will be a fine thing indeed.
• War Horse in Cape Town is mostly sold out but there are still tickets available for December 31 and January 1.