Believe me, I am not a Black Beauty fan. in fact, i am about as un animally as it's possible to be, mainly a repercussion of having killed my school hamster aged 4, and which i still have nightmares about. So i wasn't expecting to be terribly impressed with this play. it's about horses for fuck's sake. which are puppets. eh? But when the giddy, nervous, jittery foal first skitted on to the stage in The National Theatre's production of War Horse, honestly, tears came to my eyes it was so dreamlike, so realistic and so incredibly beautiful. i'm rarely moved to tears by beauty, so it was a bit of a shock (nay embarrassment), but honestly, this really is something else - totally worthy of sobbing over. Apparently the national theatre's director Nicholas Hytner had seen the puppets elsewhere and was mulling over how he could possibly use them in a production at the National, when his mother suggested Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse. rather than using marionettes on strings, the puppeteers stand inside the horses - one person controlling the hind legs, one for the front and one person manipulating the head. the structure is an elegant sinewy frame with mesh, so you can fully see the people manipulating the body, but you literally don't see them at all - in so much as they become invisible because you are so caught up in the magic of the movements - the slow breathing bobbing, the flicks of the ears, the toss of the head, the jumps and jitters of the feet. the horses have the power and presence of The Sultan's Elephant, which trundled through London with grandly statuesque leisure a few years ago, and also have a touch of the puppet Polar bears used in the National's production of His Dark Materials, also staged several years back. but BETTER. The story sounds sentimental and schmaltzy on paper, so i won't regurgitate it, but on stage, it's powerful and moving and at the climax i was LITERALLY SOBBING MY EYES OUT. sobbing. red, raw eyes all round afterwards, though, thank god, so i wasn't alone. book now.
Friday 10 April 2009
War Horse
Believe me, I am not a Black Beauty fan. in fact, i am about as un animally as it's possible to be, mainly a repercussion of having killed my school hamster aged 4, and which i still have nightmares about. So i wasn't expecting to be terribly impressed with this play. it's about horses for fuck's sake. which are puppets. eh? But when the giddy, nervous, jittery foal first skitted on to the stage in The National Theatre's production of War Horse, honestly, tears came to my eyes it was so dreamlike, so realistic and so incredibly beautiful. i'm rarely moved to tears by beauty, so it was a bit of a shock (nay embarrassment), but honestly, this really is something else - totally worthy of sobbing over. Apparently the national theatre's director Nicholas Hytner had seen the puppets elsewhere and was mulling over how he could possibly use them in a production at the National, when his mother suggested Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse. rather than using marionettes on strings, the puppeteers stand inside the horses - one person controlling the hind legs, one for the front and one person manipulating the head. the structure is an elegant sinewy frame with mesh, so you can fully see the people manipulating the body, but you literally don't see them at all - in so much as they become invisible because you are so caught up in the magic of the movements - the slow breathing bobbing, the flicks of the ears, the toss of the head, the jumps and jitters of the feet. the horses have the power and presence of The Sultan's Elephant, which trundled through London with grandly statuesque leisure a few years ago, and also have a touch of the puppet Polar bears used in the National's production of His Dark Materials, also staged several years back. but BETTER. The story sounds sentimental and schmaltzy on paper, so i won't regurgitate it, but on stage, it's powerful and moving and at the climax i was LITERALLY SOBBING MY EYES OUT. sobbing. red, raw eyes all round afterwards, though, thank god, so i wasn't alone. book now.
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