Broadway comes to San Francisco just a handful of times a year, and one of the biggest hits from the 2011 season in New York was War Horse, an import from London based on the 1982 book by the same name by children's writer Michael Morpurgo. It was adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, and the most important piece of the play is the collaboration of the Handspring Puppet Company, which created the striking, life-size horse puppets that form the center of the story. It's a tale about war, and one of the bleakest in modern times too (WWI), but it's more significantly a story about a boy and his horse, and an enduring love between the man he becomes and this creature he bonded with when he was just a foal.
The touring cast, along with duplicates of the magnificent puppets that are still appearing nightly on Broadway, is terrific and everything about the production feels world-class and fresh as it was when it opened in London's West End three years ago. A large panel that appears to be a ripped, frayed piece of paper across the top half of the stage, helps tell the story through charcoal and line drawings, as well as animation. As heavy-handed as war stories often can be, there's a light touch throughout this one that focuses squarely on character, and on the beauty of the horses themselves. (We can't speak for Spielberg's film version, which we never saw, but we'd say there's a unique power to the horse puppets, manned by three men each, that creates a less cloying emotional effect than cinematic close-ups of real horses. These are horses with personality, majesty, and a great deal of convincing emotion, and it doesn't take long before the very obvious puppeteers who are operating them disappear against the backdrop, and you begin to believe these things are real.)
The direction by Bijan Sheibani is thoughtful and restrained throughout, but the horse choreography, originally created by Tony Sedgwick, is what you're really here to see. We also have to give respect to Andrew Veenstra, who plays Albert Narracott, the boy who gets separated from his beloved horse when war breaks out, and spends the next four years trying to be reunited with him. About the only thing that made us wince a little bit was an Irish-style singing narrator of sorts who, by the middle of Act 2, you can grow a little tired of as he weaves on and off stage adding his a cappella color.
It's a tear-jerker, and a semi-tragic story of a family made tense by money trouble. But it's also an invigorating and pretty extraordinary piece of modern stagecraft that's difficult to describe, and that transcends most everyone's ideas of puppets these human-powered machines make even Lion King's Africa look a little chintzy.
Check it out while you still can, which means before Sunday, when the show closes and moves on to the next town.
War Horse is playing at the Curran Theater through September 9. Get tickets here.
