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 trenches. The fact War Horse is still touring nearly twenty years after its debut at the National Theatre suggests their mad punt has paid off because we Brits really love our animals.
War Horse is a complicated plot that requires attention as Joey the horse is trained by a young boy Albert before like millions of equines he is sold by the boy’s drunken dad to the British army, which is still coping with mechanised warfare. Once at the front Joey battles to survive horrors on both sides of the bloodbath that is the First World War as underage Albert who has taken the King’s Shilling searches for his beloved mount.
The puppetry in this production is world class as two puppeteers work in Joey’s body as another operates the head. You can only marvel at the discipline and skill needed to move in complete synchronicity reacting to the folk music that pops up during both acts, and complex sound effects, whilst exactly capturing how a horse shakes its head, jumps a fence or charges at full pelt. Another team under Toby Sedgwick’s guidance as Horse Choreographer also move in perfect unison as Joey’s equine friend Topthorn, and when both horses rear up at the end of the front of the stage it is genuinely terrifying
There are other puppets, including a comedy goose, as despite all the horrors Nick Stafford’s sympathetic adaptation offers some welcome moments of humour that only add to this production’s humanity. Christopher Shutt’s often very loud at times soundscapes full of loud bangs underlines the terror of fighting in the trenches, and Rae Smith’s set projecting images onto the back off the stage adds useful context to the onstage chaos of war.
It would have been easy for Tom Morris, and Katie Henry who is directing the revival, to focus on the puppet masters, but they never lose their grip on a story about the damage humans do to each other, and innocent animals, in the name of patriotism. Tom Sturgess as Albert subtly grows from a callow youth who during his search for his beloved horse is forced to grow up on the Western Front’s slaughterhouse, Alexander Ballinger is believable as the good German Muller who helps Joey and Jo Castleton is the personification of the home front as she waits for her boy to come home.
War Horse has elevated puppetry to a different level where you not only become convinced you are watching a horse, but you are so invested you are willing them to survive. This emotionally charged production acts as a memorial to the eight million horses and mules who died in the so called War to End All Wars.
Reviewer: Paul Clarke
Reviewed: 19th August 2025
North West End UK Rating:
War Horse is at Leeds Grand Theatre until Saturday 6th September. To book 0113 2430808 or www.Leedshertitagetheatres.com