War Horse – Leeds Grand Theatre
For most of us in this country our first exposure to puppets are Mr and Mrs Punch going at it hammer and tongs on a seafront, but War Horse is a reminder that puppetry is an art form that challenges both the practitioners and the audience.
There is something incredibly special watching a team of puppeteers moving in perfect synchronicity asking us to believe we are watching a thoroughbred horse in full flow. All theatre is to an extent a suspension of disbelief, but puppetry makes special demands of any audience’s imagination as we are constantly asked to make the inanimate real in our minds.
Michael Morpurgo who wrote the novel said the producers ‘must be mad’ to try and stage a story about a horse who is transported from the idyllic Devon countryside to the horrors of the Great War...
