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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
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Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Marianne Elliott, Tom Morris.
Cast: James Barriscale, Finn Caldwell, Paul Chequer, Tim van Eyken, Thomas Goodridge, Stephen Harper, Gareth Kennerley, Craig Leo, Tim Kewis, Tommy Luther, Mervyn Millar, Emily Mytton, Toby Olie, Howard Ward, Alan Williams, Kit Harington, Patrick O'Kane, Roger Wilson
Description: The National Theatre's staging of Michael Morpurgo's novel, adapted by Nick Stafford and directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris.
Times: Mon, Wed-Sat 7.30pm, Tue 7pm, mats Thu, Sat 2.30pm (extra mats Dec 23, 2.30pm, Dec 29, 2pm, no eve perf Dec 24, 31, no perf Dec 25), booking to Oct 23 2010
Price: £15-£49.50, child/concs £15-£39.50 (Mon-Thu), premium seats £80
Trains: Tube: Covent Garden/Holborn 
Phone: 0870890 0141
Website: www.rutheatres.com
Trench bound: David Emmings, and Bettrys Jones in War Horse
If ever a piece of theatre worked magic then it must be War Horse. Nick Stafford’s persuasive adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel, premiered at the National in 2007, now canters into town with the confidence of a natural-born winner in this superbly integrated production by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris. It should appeal to imaginations aged anything from 12 to 92.
The key to the show’s almost eerie success is its creation of larger-than-horse-life equines — the puppet-contraptions, Joey and Topthorn. As conceived with startling brilliance by Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler and fashioned from wood leather, string and canvas, each puppet horse requires three puppeteers to operate it. Director of Horse Choreography Toby Sedgwick makes these imitation-animals amazing. Somehow you forget the existence of the puppeteers, even as they bring these creatures to life. It is as if they were anthropomorphous: we identify with them.
War Horse, though, is not a tear-inducing tribute to animals cruelly caught up in our wars. Something more serious and interesting is afoot.
Initially set in a Devon village in summer 1914, Stafford depicts an impoverished farming family — beset by Anglo-Saxon froideur and emotional reserve. The violent paterfamilias is at loggerheads with his son (Kit Harrington’s withdrawn Albert). This teenager’s passion for Joey is quintessentially English.
Love for an animal substitutes for human love. So Albert coaxes the horse into ploughing to save him from being sold, suffers agonies when the animal is requisitioned for war and is improbably reunited with Joey when he goes to war himself.
Rae Smith’s rear-stage projection screen, with sketch-book drawings of rural England, is soon rendered dramatic with Vorticist Images of the Western Front. Those Puppet horses thunder across stage in a cavalry charge, which leaves one of them writhing in agony; a gun-carriage lumbers across no-man’s land; Joey whinnies trapped in barbed wire. The second half, when the horse falls into enemy hands and the air is full of actors speaking English in German and French accents, loses narrative drive. Even so War Horse proves a rare winner
Booking to 26 September. Information: 0844 412 4654.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I'm even considering a visit to the UK to see this, so good has the feedback been (and not the 'official' feedback, but that from people I know ....)
- Marianne, SW France
I work in the theatre and as I sit there trying to figure out how they came to that conclusion, what made them do that and generally pick it all apart from every angle .... I find it very difficult to be transported with unconditional magic into a story. War Horse with its spirited and love fuelled innocence transfixed me from beginning to end and 'I believed'.
The crew of puppeteers who worked the incredible models of Joey and Topthorn, drove the show with their detailed crafting of the horses. Accompanied with a cast whose humility gave the production truth and hope. All aspects of this show, music, design, song, costume left me with the feeling that a dream team of creatives had put this together.
If you have the chance to see this show, please go.... it is magical.
- Shazz Andrew, London
I have been lucky enough to see this amazing production 5 times.Four of which I took youngsters,who were happy to queue for hours in the morning to get the £10 day tickets.It is such a moving story and realy does give a ture understanding of what it must have been like at the outbreak and during the 1st world war.The whole production is of a truly outstanding level. it is theatre like this which is what Lord Olivier worked so hard to create the National theatre.This production really must tour,so that the who nation can see it.
- Selwyn Channon, Epsom
