Monday, November 7, 2011

New favorite

For the longest time, The Phantom of the Opera was my favorite Broadway musical, although this was sort of out of default. My parents were kind of Phantom nerds back in the eighties and even followed it up to Toronto just so they could see it again. Whenever we were going on a long car ride, we'd pop in the soundtrack and sing away. I've seen it on stage at least three times and each time it's been magical.

And then there was War Horse. Dear god, this play blows Phantom out of the water. What Phantom has in sheer gargantuan extravagance, War Horse had in unadulterated awesome. The set is minimal, consisting of a rotating stage, a narrow screen above the stage, and some moveable props. Oh yeah, AND THE PUPPETS!

My favorite scene. 

Yes sir, that is a puppet. Three people are required to operate it, two inside and one on the outside to control the head movements. The puppetry is absolutely amazing. The ears move, the body looks like its breathing, and the tail swishes. There were times when I forgot it wasn't actually a horse on stage. Plus, people ride these puppets.

If you don't know the story, it's a (yet another) tale about a boy who finds an amazing horse but they are separated and then try to find each other once again despite the odds. Okay, it's not the most original of story lines, but it started off as a children's book (as if that should be an excuse). Basically, Albert falls in love with a young hunter foal and names him Joey. He teaches him to plow in order to win a bet so that he can keep the horse while simultaneously making Joey a work horse for their struggling farm. When Albert's father sells Joey to the British cavalry and he is shipped off to fight in World War I, Albert has to find him among the trenches of Europe. Now imagine this done with life-sized horse puppets. Here's just one of the videos you can find on YouTube:



Another amazing aspect of the play is the music. It's not a musical per-say, but it does have a man who sings various war-era English folk tunes which compliment the scenes. Since much of the play deals with Joey and Albert's desire to return to England where everything is safe and they can be together, the folk songs feel like pieces of home they can take with them.

Knowing that eventually Joey was going to go to war, I went into the play expecting to cry. It first drew tears from me within the first five minutes when Joey as a foal appears on stage and I thought "Oh, look at the little horsey. The little horsey is going to go to war!" I then cried four other times during the rest of the play. I don't know if I'm just that much of a wimp, but from what I hear this is a fairly common reaction. The story deals with some pretty dark subject matter, and the fact that the main character is a horse just doesn't make you want to see a helpless animal die on the battlefield.

Whether or not you want to cry your eyes out in an auditorium full of strangers, I highly recommend that you see the play if you can just to see the puppets. Right now it's only in London, New York, and Toronto, however in 2012 they're going to kick of a US tour. I am going to go see it as many times as I can.

Plus, it will be nice to see my favorite character, the comic relief goose, again.

(image from here)

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