War Horse- Page 2

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/11/11 at 9:45am

As I eluded to above, I actually think the episodic nature of the characters and plot is a big part of the point of WAR HORSE - you see glimpses of a huge myriad of lives - all torn apart by the horrors of war - but touched in some way by the brief experience of connection with this horse - this pure soul in the middle of all this battle and bloodshed that tore apart millions of lives.

As such, yes, the characters may have to be painted in bold strokes - but the catarthic experience would, in my opinion, have been much less powerful if the story centered on less characters.

PS - if anyone hasn't seen this yet - you must watch it
CBS News Story

[Lynnespock2]

Posted: 4/13/11 at 9:01pm

War Horse was an amazing theater experience. i cried like a baby at the end and the way the horses are done is fantastic, so real that you a drawn in and forget you are watching puppets, you are watching horses. Brilliant!

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 4/14/11 at 7:58am

My attention flagged 90% of the time that the horses weren't onstage. I'd heard that the writing was iffy... but I didn't expect to come away thinking that it was downright *bad*

[Eagleman]

Posted: 4/23/11 at 3:01am

Great points.

I was a fighter pilot and while I never experienced anything close to the unimaginable brutality of ground war in the great wars, the memories of my more harrowing experiences are not very linear.

I spoke to one or two guys who saw the first Persian Gulf war from the ground and there is really no way to dramatize it. Has any drama REALLY been written that can approximate the emotional devastation of, let's say, having one's child murdered? Of course, not, the theater allows us to experience such things in a remote, very muted way. Eventually death steps off the stage, puts its icy finger on us and we become one of the people we read about.

This piece has touched a great number of people and my guess is that if you walk away from it with a jaundiced view, your expectations had already sabotaged the show for you or you are trying to make it fit into the same category as something by O'Neill or Stoppard.

[Sean2]

Posted: 4/23/11 at 11:43am

It's most important that this play is seen as a history play. As Americans, we're not familiar with how WWI affected people in England. It was a pivotal moment in history, the loss of innocence of the British people -- the British galloped into war on horses, armed with swords, only to be mown down by gattling guns. Most British families have direct knowledge of their great-grandparent/uncle being killed in the war. It went from the personal -- hand-to-hand combat -- to the intense impersonal barbarism of mechanized killing.

The script has taken a lot of flak for being simplistic. In the original children's book, the story was told from the point of view of Joey, Albert's horse, as he travels from country to country and sees the war through the eyes of 'the enemy', hopefully opening children's eyes to not only the horrors of war, but the common link of humanity; innocent people from both sides were thrown into the thick of it.

Instead of opting to have Joey 'talk' through an actor, they decided to let the story reveal itself. That's good writing. I've seen 'War Horse' four times now, from the original production at the National Theatre onwards. Watching the numerous acts of humanity throughout the story is humbling in the least; profoundly life-changing at its best. This young boy's story, whose innocence and devotion overcomes all his fears and all improbabilities, is not a simplistic, over-written, under-written piece of theatre. It's all there, but it's not being handed over on a plate. Accusations of sentimentality are misplaced. It's only 'just sentimental' if you keep yourself at arm's length from it.