National Theatre Live: War Horse (2014) Reviews

• Whoa!

  sesht2015-03-24

  I've not read the book this is based on. I haven't watched the Spielberg movie either, which is considered lightweight Spielberg btw. I will check it out sometime though. This one was screened as part of a new endeavor where Nation Theater LIVE art works are being screening, 1 show / week, across various multiplexes, to audiences of 2-20 (2, including me and my friend). As always, consistent with specialty releases, this one also arrived with almost no publicity, and many who might be interested to purchase tickets and watch this missed out. Of course, there were those who got up and walked out as well, a la most of the audience-members during NTL (Danny Boyle's) Frankenstein. And those who came in 20 minutes late and stayed, enraptured, like we were. There was also a bad interruption during a segment where NTL staff interviewed one of the directors and the book's author, which was very informative, but another thing that was great about this was the behind-the-scenes look at the puppeteers and their teams. Magnificent! There are many great things about this visualization of 'War Horse'. 2 key decisions: 1. The horse does not talk. The horse's thoughts are not read-out of alluded to. It's all mime and responding to the human characters. 2. The puppeteers are visible in their handling of the horse puppets, bringing each and every moment, their very breath, to glorious life. Initially, I was distracted, but the amazing teamwork demonstrated by the puppeteer teams put plaid to further reservations from us. Well, those were the key decisions made by the makers, that they spoke about during the segment at the end of the 1st act. The score's magnificent. Ordinarily, for an epic work such as this one, I'd expect it to be all robust and clichéd, but what they have composed here is simply magnificent, and warrants a to be part of your music collection. The choice to have a torn screen on top for certain sequences, and the overall art design, like everything else, is simply magnificent, nay, perfect. The performances are all magnificent, but I'd like single 2 of those out: 1, from the stellar Ian Shaw (Johnny English Reborn, sigh), who plays a German officer integral to the 2nd act, and 2, From Alex Avery (Last chance Harvey) who put faces to the fact that people on both sides of a war are usually the same, with the ones who are noble that suffer the most, and are easily taken away from us, and the ones who're evil, keep pulling everyone's strings (with the exception of the horses' puppeteers, 0of course). There's a liberal interspersing of English with Belgian French and German, and I was lucky to understand 2 of the 3 languages, but the friend I was accompanying was sure that English subtitles for those portions was unnecessary (I am a little nitpicky about that, so I'd have preferred it - just saying), and essentially the artistic decision to have it this way was, I'm sure, like everything else about this play, carefully considered, thought out and decided upon. I will not second-guess these makers. Ever. I'll surely go to another viewing of this, if ever there was another, and look forward to other works from the talents behind this one. I do wish I had the chance to catch this live, at the National Theater. Bucket list item for sure.

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• I am in the minority, it seems

  bloopville2014-05-06

  I went to this with a group of people who thought it was wonderful and delightful, while I found it tedious an not compelling. The story is: Boy finds horse Boy loses horse Horse causes world peace Boy finds horse again for a tearful homecoming Within this fairly trite framework could have been an interesting story, but the script replaced drama with melodrama. The plot development wasn't just uncomplicated. It was simplistic. The good Germans were just like the salt of- the- earth British, but the bad Germans were frothing and unhinged certified animal haters. There was a British folk singer with a nice voice singing late 60s style Pentangle/ Richard THompson British folkie songs that had nothing to do with the story being presented in the play. In the songs a ploughboy meets a girl, and John Barleycorn rises from the grave. Now, that might have been a more interesting movie. The acting was not up to British stage standards, with the mother and the German cavalry officer being particularly wooden. Only the British Sargent playing the gruff- but- kindly stereotypical sarge with a nice comedic touch rose above tawdry tedium. The real stars were supposed to be the animal, played by clever puppets, but, in essence, it was like low tech CGI in that all effort seemed to be spent on the puppets, while the script and acting suffered. However, I was in the minority. Everybody else thought it was fantastic.

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