War Horse Review

The theatre adaption of War Horse features hand crafted Wooden Puppets to portray the image of a living horse. When I went to see it was at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton on Thursday 6th March 2014.

The War Horse Production is about a young boy named Albert and his horse Joey. Joey is auctioned off and sectioned from his mother at a young age and Albert develops a mother-like bond with Joey. When war is among the Devon village Albert’s father, Ted narrocot so badly needs the money that he betrays Albert’s promise and sells Joey to the Army. Albert is too connected to Joey to let him go, so the story begins, a soldier and horse destined for tragedy and to eventually become reunited.

My opinion is that I really like the cinematography and the way the stage is laid out, I think the horses look extremely realistic due to the 3 puppeteers also known as the Head, The Heart and The Hind. I like that it is a basic set and the people become it, I think the projections are effective on the ‘torn’ page.

I think if you have read the book, this will blow your mind away and the phrase ‘the book is always better’ may not be so true.

Caltrop

I was watching ‘war horse the real story’ on channel 4 and they mentioned this, a caltrop. It was designed to go into the hoof and then up into the joint of the horse and mame it, the Germans would scatter these in no-mans land in the hope that when the British cavalry advanced it would mame horses. It took a humungous amount of time for the horses to recover, due to this device hundreds of horses in the first world war were shot.