Packing a punch

It’s a good month for the Great War. At the National Theatre this week a new play by Michael Morpurgo tells the story of the war seen through the eyes of a horse. Staged with huge puppet nags, War Horse sounds on paper like the theatrical lovechild of Equus and Birdsong. Up in Bolton, with a good deal less hype, they are doing another war horse — Oh! What a Lovely War. It was first staged in 1963 by the radical Theatre Workshop, in the East End. The Great War satire was aimed at the political edification of the working class, but sadly for the Revolution it quickly attracted posh nobs from Kensington, transferred to the West End and became a huge commercial hit and finally an all-star extravaganza film in 1969.

The show remains a legend. Its heroes were the blind, gassed victims of the first world war, their hands on each other’s shoulders, dressed as pierrots parading round the stage to the melancholy of the tunes of the trenches. Watching it, you can’t whistle along to ‘goodbye-ee’ and enjoy the nostalgia because the songs are counterpointed by a board proclaiming the horrifying casualty statistics as the war progresses. A chipper Edwardian music-hall knees-up with a comedy Kaiser is sabotaged by newsclips and savage stuff about politicians, profiteers, brass hats and capitalists. It was all very Sixties, according to almost everyone who saw the original — totally unforgettable.

It has to be said that the class-war element — even on the page — now looks a shade embarrassing. And the strenuously debunking ‘lions led by donkeys’ account of the war it promotes is a total joke to all serious modern historians. But for all that, it remains a thrillingly original piece, almost intolerably sad and a tremendous challenge for any company to stage.