War Horse still moves me to tears as it returns to the National after 19 years
War Horse – Michael Morpurgo 's story of a Devonshire lad, his beloved horse and the horror of the First World War – is the most successful play in the National's history. Nearly nine million people have seen it worldwide in the 19 years since the show premiered . Nineteen years: that was the age of those who suffered the highest casualty rates on the Western Front. While a sense of triumphant homecoming to the Olivier stage is entirely merited, this is, all the same, a theatrical blockbuster that never loses sight of the tragic sacrifice and loss it derives from.
The huge risk taken by the show's creative team – led by directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris (who now oversees this fresh iteration) – was to flip the conceit of Morpurgo's 1982 novel. Instead of the action being narrated by the horse (Joey), our equine hero is placed centre-stage, but mute – in its own world. That could have resulted in a dramatic deficit; instead, owing to the ingenuity of the puppetry (by Handspring) and our own imaginations, this wondrous creature becomes the emblem of innocent suffering in the face of indescribable horror .
Unlike in the novel, Joey the horse is mute, brought to life by the wonderful puppetry - Brinkhoff-Moegenburg
As a result of the deft artistry of Joey's three handlers, we invest as much in the splendid chestnut steed as its boyish carer and confidant, Albert, does. From the vulnerability of the foal taking its first steps in its rustic milieu – dainty, with ears cocked – to the full-sized incarnation, panting and charging, there's not a tail-flick or neck-inclination that looks misjudged or superficial. Come the nightmare of the Somme (and this summer marks 110 years since that battle), and Joey's eyes seem to widen in palpable terror; it's as if you glimpse his inner workings.
The first see Joey as a vulnerable foal taking its first steps in a rustic setting - Brinkhoff-Moegenburg
The show never fails to move me to tears, not least because of its improbability: from pitiful separation, with Albert absconding and enlisting to track down Joey amid the trenches, to unlikely reunion, it's the miracle that never came for millions. Everything is harnessed, without sentimentality, to a confrontation with something irrecoverable.
Whether it's the late Adrian Sutton's music , combining folk songs with wistful strains redolent of Elgar, or the scenic magic of a sketch-book stirring to life, this is a single-minded collective endeavour to evoke and reanimate a vanished world, and with it a roll call of the dead. Tom Sturgess is just perfect – fresh-faced, smiling, finally haunted – as Albert: so, a new generation has taken the reins of this living, breathing monument to the fallen.
Until July 30; nationaltheatre.org.uk
