Review: War Horse, Bristol Hippodrome

The National Theatre’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel is a hugely impressive spectacle. The equine puppets from South Africa’s Handspring are every bit as lifelike as you’d hope them to be, and the staging is fluid and evocative. And if there’s occasionally a relentless quality to the second half, it is one of the more gripping evocations of the constant noise, panic and bewilderment of war that you’re likely to see.

We begin in that sunlit Edwardian era just before the outbreak of World War One. In a quiet Devon village, farmer’s son Albert Narracott is forging a strong bond with Joey, a spirited hunting foal. It is this sympathy between man and beast that later drives Albert, now a callow 17-year-old, to leave the rolling Devon countryside for the Somme, in the faint hope of a reunion with his beloved horse.

The show’s sheer visual power and adventurousness is evident throughout. From the off, the Narracotts’ bucolic Devon acres are beautifully rendered by chattering birdsong, careering swifts mounted on tall poles and, best of all, a carousel of charcoal landscape sketches, enlarged to fill much of the backdrop of the stage. These sketches are a constant throughout the play and, whether evoking rolling Devon hillsides, stormy Channel crossings or blasted French battlefields, are a brilliant, always captivating enhancement to the action.

If much of the first half evokes the landscape and customs of Edwardian rural England –its farming lore, marketplace banter, folk songs – the second half is given over entirely to the shock, terror, confusion and, yes, gallows humour of life on the Western Front. Through a mix of puppetry, soundscapes and those ever-changing, captivating backdrops – not to mention a robust attitude towards the volume button – the play evokes this hellish, bewildering theatre of war splendidly.

Respite is scarce, as it will have been for those soldiers, though it does come – most touchingly in the friendship that blossoms between Müller (Martin Wenner), a sensitive German captain who hates the war and his place in it, and French farmer’s daughter Emilie (Rebecca Killick).

Those feted horse puppets are brilliantly lifelike, their motion and sounds rendered superbly by the performers within. The human cast, meanwhile, are effective across the board, if lacking in a little nuance. Lee Armstrong’s Albert is a brave, noble young man with a touching yearning to be reunited with his equine soulmate – but he only seems to have one gear, an excitable, shouty delivery that fits the war scenes but which could do with relieving elsewhere. Among the rest of the cast, too, there are plenty of stalwart portraits but few, bar Wenner’s thoughtful, self-doubting Müller, who suggest more than one dimension.

In a play driven overwhelmingly by its visual impact, though, this is a minor caveat. The sensations you will take home are of wartime’s noisy chaos and frequent bursts of terror; of the quiet green English swards left far behind; and of the deep, wordless bond between a country boy and his horse.

War Horse continues at Bristol Hippodrome until Saturday, 14 February. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.atgtickets.com/shows/war-horse/bristol-hippodrome

Pictures: Brinkhoff Mögenburg