Horse play

Here’s something new to ban. Writers who use the Great War as an emotional backdrop to their stories. It’s embarrassing to see so many authors marching up the alley marked ‘failure of invention’. And it dishonours the dead to use their blood as wallpaper. Sadly the subject is just too tempting. It’s our equivalent of the Oedipus myth. Jocasta is the war. Oedipus is the eager recruit. Their union leads to mutilation, chaos, death and a wave of blood-guilt spreading down the generations. Michael Morpurgo’s novel War Horse focuses on the millions of animals who died in the trenches and the NT has put the book on the stage to coincide with the Christmas shopping season. Nice day out. Death and horror followed by éclairs and new dresses.

The show’s big selling point is the technical achievement of the Handspring Puppet Company. They’ve created the best pantomime horses you’ll ever see. Each has three operators manipulating the limbs and head to create an eerily fluid effect that somehow evokes the indefinable horseyness of horses. It’s amazing. But limited. Aside from the visuals, the show is on the Scooby Doo level. The main horse is very nice but is owned by a nasty man who has a nice son. The nasty man sells the horse to the army so the nice son volunteers and gets yelled at by a nasty sergeant-major. And on it goes. The show’s bizarre assumption is that horses are more interesting than people. And if you believe that you’re not a person. You’re a horse. Sure, the production will delight pony-mad kids but it’ll also bore adults to death. If you’ve got hippo-phile nippers send them along with the Pole and put your feet up at home.