You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Alas, the same can’t be said about a farmer with a drouth and a pocketful of change being led to an alehouse of ill repute (Gwilym Lloyd as Ted Narracott) who six sheets to the wind later and 39 guineas to the wind lighter receives the wrath of his wife Rose (Jo Castleton) for blowing their mortgage on a bony nag with a fat head for no other reason than to outbid and get one over on his brother Arthur (William Ilkley) who openly chastises him for not serving his country in the Boer War.

In the morning after the night before, Ted’s hangover is exacerbated when he realises that his equine acquisition is a hunter rather than a carthorse. Half thorough, half draught to be precise. But through the care and determination of his son Albert (Thomas Dennis), who puts the now christened Joey through an intensive week of training in the art of farming, he manages to recoup his losses and quell his wife’s wrath by getting another one over on his now irate brother by winning a bet that Joey can pull a plough.

All’s well that ends well ‒ until the assassination of Franz Ferdinand prompts a chain of events which leads the British Prime Minister Henry Herbert Asquith to declare that “a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany”. Overnight, boys become men, men become soldiers and soldiers become fallen heroes in a foreign field. The last one standing being the long-faced Joey whose sale to the cavalry draws his sixteen year old owner to cross his parents, cross the Channel and cross himself as he crosses No Man’s Land where he comes face to face with the horrors of war: bloodshed, suicide, agony, desertion, futility.

Unlike the film which is heavy on the schmaltz, Nick Stafford’s stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel of the same name, which 11 years after its National Theatre premier is half way through its second UK tour, is less of a tearjerker and more of a spectacle. In fact, it is only in the closing scene that the emotions are actually stirred. But, boy, what a spectacle. Using every inch of the Edinburgh Festival Theatre’s expansive stage, directors Marianne Elliot and Tom Morris marshal their 34-strong troupe of actors, singers and puppeteers with military precision, combining a cloud-like projection of battle sketches with a nightmarish score and harsh lighting to chronicle Albert’s journey from birdsong to bombings.

But the star of the show is, as you would imagine, our pal Joey. Or rather, our pal Joey and his fellow life-size war horses designed by the Cape Town-based Handspring Puppet Company: strong, muscular and fleet of foot, yet designed with such intricacy so as to convey a range of emotions with great subtlety and sensitivity, they are nothing short of terrific. But as Michael Morpurgo writes in his programme notes, “War Horse is not simply a show or a play about a war, a horse and a boy. It is an anthem of peace, and reflects, I think, a universal longing for a world without war.” A longing which is stronger now than ever.

Peter Callaghan
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