I promised...

...that I would give a written review of "War Horse" here.  So, here it is. 

I'm not going to give away too much of the plot, I hope, but there were a lot of things about the show that deserve commentary.  It's important enough as a piece of theatre, I think, to warrant me doing this.  Or maybe I just like hearing myself sound important.  I'm guessing it's the latter.

You can Google search the origins of the show, I'm not going to talk about that here.  What I'm talking about is what I SAW, felt, and heard.  That's it.  Enough with the prelims.

"War Horse," at its heart, is a fairly simple story.  And that's precisely where the show went off the tracks for me.  It's about a boy who gets a horse.  It happens to be a magnificent horse, capable of things that it should not be capable of for its breed.  The boy lives under the roof of a very proud, very stubborn, and very insecure Irish man.   The man bid his mortgage for the horse as a colt at auction, just to keep his brother from getting it.  He's got some problems.  Long story short, the idea is that the horse, once it matures, will eventually be sold for what was paid, and the debt will be paid.  The horse is a racer.  The man is a farmer.  The horse is of no use to him.  So, the man's brother goads him into trying to make Joey (the horse) a farm horse capable of pulling a plow.  If, in a week's time, the horse can pull a plow, the brother will give the man the 37 pounds he paid for Joey, and the man can keep the horse.  The boy is promised that if Joey can do it, the horse will be his forever.  Joey pulls the plow.  All is right.  Except that the bell starts tolling.  Meaning that World War I has begun, and that the men of the town are headed to war.

I'm getting too plot intensive.  The British need horses for the cavalry.  Joey, who was promised to be the boy's, is sold for 100 pounds to the war effort.  100 pounds is a hell of a good price.  The boy, at 16, runs away to find his horse by joining the army.  We see the struggles of the horse, being passed from British soldier to British soldier as they are killed, then the horse winds up in the hands of the Germans, then is finally reunited with his owner.  We see the boy and his struggles in the war.  The boy is weak, the horse is weak, but they make it home.  Happyish ending. 

Let's get on with what is wrong/right. 



See that guy by the head?  Looks like he's helping the horse, doesn't he?  Know how weird that is in a war zone?

The 800 pound gorilla for anyone interested in the show is the puppetry of the horses.  Magnificent.  They move like real horses.  They are simply amazing.  At one point, they walked it up the aisle, to the applause of the patrons.  Unfortunately, it was not the aisle we were close to, but it was cool.  I was astounded by what the bits of plastic/wood/whatever material they used were able to accomplish.  The horse seemed to breathe.  It had horse mannerisms.  If I had one complaint, it was that the puppeteer manipulating the head was outside the costume, and although he was "part of the horse" he looked like he was petting the horse's head at times rather than making it move.  It was odd to have a guy so calmly standing next to the horse when big drama was happening around him.

Also right:  when we met the Germans, the British had just mounted a charge across no man's land.  It failed.  Joey and one other horse made it through.  The rest were tangled in barbed wire, and had to be put down.  A German soldier is screaming at the British, in English, about how stupid they were to ride against machine guns and into barbed wire.  The British are screaming back, in English, that they don't speak German.  It was very effective to be able to understand what both sides were saying without them actually communicating.  Very good choice.  No subtitles.  Just English language.  Proving that neither side was really "evil."  Just misunderstood.  Nice.  There was awkwardly comedic scene later as a result of this, but at that point, we needed a little levity.

Now.  What's wrong. 

An 11 year old girl is introduced.  We never learn her fate.  We can assume she dies, but we never see it.  You cannot put a child in a war zone and not show us what happened.  That's not fair.  I know it's "real," but the horse was a puppet.  I'm sitting in a theatre seat, and the cannonball that killed the British Lieuntenant was a flashlight on a stick that someone walked into his chest.  It's not real.  So.  Tell me what happened to the girl.

The show is at least half an hour too long.  There is a very long, drawn out scene about moving some cannons.  It keeps going, and going.  Yes, we knew it would work out OK.  We didn't need it to take that long.  It would have tightened things up. 

Now for my biggest criticism.  Read a book.  Go get some information about World War I.  There are not many things that were more stupid, cruel, senseless, and just flat out wastes of human lives as that war.  World War II killed more people, mostly because the machinery had gotten so good at it.  World War I was just a meat grinder.  Trenches that didn't move, where every day, someone new would try and get to the other side, only to be beaten back after losing just about all their men.  They called it a "war of attrition."  That is disgusting.  Kill everyone on the other side.  Beyond wasteful.  I'm getting off the beaten path.  I know World War I was awful.  The play is designed to make us sympathetic to a couple of characters to show us how awful it was.  Except that the story isn't good enough to justify that.  At least it wasn't to me.  "All Quiet..." tells me that much better.  Watching a horse struggle to move a cannon doesn't help illustrate that.  It's a major flaw.  In my opinion, anyway. 

Overall, I think "War Horse" is a piece of theatre worth viewing, if only for the horse.  And, unfortunately, that's about the best I can say about it.  I'm glad I saw it.  I think everyone who sees it feels the same.  I'm just not sure I'd ever want to see it again.