TRAVIS WEAGANT
<Co-Editor-in-Chief>
Children often find war difficult to understand, so we explain it to them by simplifying it into a “good vs. evil” narrative where two camps hate each other so much they want to kill each other. You can imagine then, how much more difficult it is to explain the more complicated aspects of armed conflict, especially when people from opposite sides don’t kill each other.
Based on such a simplistic narrative, children’s understanding of the value of life and the moral consequences of killing is not developed enough to understand why a British soldier could look a German soldier in the eye, lower his rifle, and walk back to his trench without shedding any blood. Even a formidable parent or teacher would simply rather explain such things “when you’re older.”
In 1982, Michael Morpurgo made a valiant attempt at this daunting task, and succeeded. His children’s novel War Horse tells the story of Joey, a young thoroughbred acquired by the Narracott family just before the First World War. When war breaks out, Mr. Narracott sells Joey to the cavalry. Unable to forget his beloved horse, the Narracotts’ son Albert enlists underage and sets off to France after him.
Last year, Steven Spielberg brought the story to the big screen in epic fashion, but this is not the only adaptation of the novel. In 2007, Morpurgo’s book took to the stage in London, making its way to Broadway in 2011, and to Toronto this year where I saw it on October 19 at the Princess of Wales theatre.
Typical of Mirvish’s popular extended-run shows, War Horse was enjoyable, to say the least. Of particular interest was the unique portrayal of several horses in the production. Two performers brought Joey to life as a foal, and each adult horse had a team of three puppeteers maneuvering their giant horse puppet. The performers, who undoubtedly studied hours upon hours of real horse movement to make their mimicry so believable, produced all the movements and various horse sounds themselves. The programme credits each horse’s ensemble together, which spared any particular performers from a credit as a horse’s ass. The presence of puppeteers operating the horse characters was never distracting and they deserve the utmost credit for so skillfully portraying characters with no lines. This alone made the performance worthwhile, and it was excellent overall. I do, however, have one bone to pick with the director.
The play involves British, French, and German characters alike. A stage production of this type cannot benefit from subtitles, meaning that all the dialogue must be in English. However, there are multiple instances where unilingual characters of different mother tongues speak with one another, leaving Director Marianne Elliott with the challenge of signifying what language is being spoken when, and which characters are meant to understand what is being said. Elliott opted to use accents. While this is very effective and easily understood by the audience, some of the players struggled with the accents more than others.
My date mentioned having seen Patrick Galligan, who portrays German officer Friedrich Müller, in productions at the Shaw Festival, where he performed for nine seasons with distinction. Müller is perhaps the most interesting human character in War Horse and Galligan would have been captivating were it not for his laboured and distracting German accent.
That said, the stage adaptation of War Horse achieves what its original author set out to do: explain some of the complexities of war to children. Ironically, it does this through characters who do not speak. While children do not always engage with complex adult characters, it is very easy for a child to sympathize with an animal, and similarly easy for children to understand why characters in the play do as well. Thus, when German and Allied soldiers’ love of their horses transcends the casual tragedy and atrocity of the war, it is easy for a child to understand why. This is what makes War Horse remarkable in all its incarnations – book, stage, and film. This production was no exception.
War Horse runs at the Princess of Wales Theatre until January 6. Tickets are $45-$130 each, with sale and rush prices available for certain performances, and are available through TicketKing at mirvish.com.