One of the great productions of our time

War Horse showreel from Toby Olie on Vimeo.
Footage from Toby Olie's rehearsals and performances in War Horse, starting as the hind puppeteer of Joey in the National Theatre's original production, alongside Craig Leo (head) and Tommy Luther (heart), and then as head puppeteer of Joey in the consequent West End transfer, alongside Robin Guiver (heart) and Ben Thompson (hind).

Every few years an unforgettable production comes along.  War Horse is one such show.  I've already written about the London version - but I also managed to catch the American leg of its international tour, which holds the stage at the Opera House through Sunday.

And I felt in the end it was an honorable reproduction of the original, even if it was somewhat cramped on the Opera House proscenium.  In London, a wider apron allowed the horses (Joey and and his doomed buddy Topthorn) to canter and trot at will - sometimes in wide circles - which was impossible here (the limitations of the stage also meant the tank which Joey confronts in the second act had to roll on, and then turn around and roll off).  There was also some slight gap in the verisimilitude of the horses' galloping - my guess is that this is calibrated precisely to the blocking, and so in each new house, it must be re-calibrated, and re-learnt.  Still, the miracle of the production's "living" puppetry (see video above) - which depends on the coordination by three separate puppeteers (who all quickly "disappear" to our theatrical perception) of every feature of their horses' anatomies - had in essence survived its Atlantic crossing.

There were other small changes.  In London, the eponymous horse's owner, Albert, was believably a teen-ager - here he was the hunky and capable Andrew Veenstra, who was obviously a full-grown man (and Joey therefore looked somewhat bulked up from his London version, too, to carry the added weight).  And the second act felt slightly streamlined - which was probably a good thing, actually, as the production begins to pound home its anti-war message a bit repetitively.

I have been amused to see that several of the lesser critics have sniffed at the show, however, and made points that are obvious, yet, I suppose count as sophisticated for them.  War Horse is, yes, based on a children's novel - and its innocent story is yoked, perhaps awkwardly, to an intensely rendered pacifist message (it follows the horrific sufferings of the horses who did service in World War I). I can't deny that there's an issue there, at that hinge - poor Joey and Topthorn's travails may be too much for the youngest theatregoers.  (Joey's screams once he is trapped in the barbed wire of No Man's Land are at lot for anyone to handle.)  Nor does Nick Stafford's adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's original novel quite make the ironies of Joey's adventures on (and across) the German lines "come alive" as they might.

But let's be honest - the text is for the most part quite sturdy - how can people who take Les Miz or Rent seriously sniff at this?  And the production's evocations of trench warfare are often stunningly imaginative - in fact I've never seen war conjured as powerfully on stage as it is here; and if we feel almost fatigued by the Great War's horrors by the finish - well, that comes with the territory, doesn't it (and surely the lines that reference the British disasters in Afghanistan sound an important echo today!).

All this is as nothing, however, before the magic of the production's horses, and the way in which the craft of Handspring Puppet Company has brought to the stage something that has never been seen there before - fully-developed animal "characters," rendered with a poignant force that is all but guaranteed to reconnect you to a beloved pet, or your childhood, or perhaps just the simple pleasures of being alive, and how vulnerable such joys are, and will forever be.  I know it sounds corny to say it - and of course the show isn't cheap (although I believe half-price tickets are available at ArtsBoston) - but if you see one show this season, it should be War Horse.  Trust me, you will never forget it.

War Horse, Spielberg, and the wooden O

War Horse (above, a promotional clip that gives some sense of the power of its puppetry) is scheduled for March 2011 on Broadway - and I anticipate a response like the mobbed performances us old-timers remember from the tour of Nicholas Nickleby some twenty-five years ago. The arrival of the National Theatre blockbuster, followed by the much-anticipated residency of the Royal Shakespeare Company later that summer, will no doubt revive the persistent sense that American theatre lags behind its British cousin - indeed, the fact that the RSC is building a facsimile of its own digs in the Park Avenue Armory (below) only reinforces this impression with an added, subliminal message, "Not only do we have to show you Yanks how it's done, but we have to bring our own theatre to do it."



And let's be honest: there's a great deal of truth behind that impression; I admit I haven't seen anything on the American stage for several years that equals the eloquent power of War Horse. No new musical has come close, and even the considerable firepower of August: Osage County seems to flicker in comparison. War Horse isn't perfect - its second half drags a bit, due to a lengthy extension of its pacifist metaphor; but for all of its first half - and of course for its finale - it's just about peerless.

But precisely what is it peerless at? you may ask - Isn't it really just a children's story, a kind of inflated version of "Lassie Come Home"? And what does it have to tell us - that war is horrible? I think we already know that!

These points are well taken, of course; there's little that's thematically novel or striking in War Horse. What is unforgettable about it is not its message but the means of its artistry, and how those means are linked to the primal basis of theatre. To revive a much-repeated phrase, in War Horse, the medium is the message. Its meaning is embedded in its presentation on the stage.



To understand why this is so, ponder (for a moment) the fact that upon seeing the production, Steven Spielberg immediately optioned the book for the silver screen - in fact he's shooting his version right now, on location outside Devon, England (left). But of course he's using real horses, and real soldiers, for what sounds like an equine version of Saving Private Ryan (for his script, he ditched the stage adaptor for the screenwriters of Love, Actually and Billy Elliot). I heard quite a few people discussing the film in the West End theatre where I saw War Horse; they all agreed it simply wouldn't be the same thing as the unforgettable stage version we'd just witnessed.

But what precisely would be missing? For make no mistake, the Spielberg War Horse will be a masterful tearjerker. It will also no doubt be spectacular; I'm sure no expense will be spared in the reconstruction of the No Man's Land between the British and German trenches of World War I, in which the eponymous "war horse," Joey, almost meets his doom. The story will be "brought to life" in a way that will be utterly convincing in every detail. And yet when fans of the theatre piece think of the pushy, obvious sentiment and grandiose illusionism Spielberg is known for, they almost reflexively curl their lips.

Part of this reaction, of course, is testament to the power of understatement - for the National Theatre's War Horse is careful (at least until its finale) to avoid milking its material. The production is intentionally rough around the edges, the characters hard, and hardly lovable - and the bond between boy and horse that is the spine of the play takes its time to develop, and so is all the more believable once it has developed.

All that, of course, may not be evidence of actual artistic virtue but rather a form of canny commercial sophistication, of a type Mr. Spielberg doesn't, and perhaps cannot, share; I'd wager the makers of War Horse knew quite well that sentiment is most savory when it's hard-won. I can only say - give me that kind of commercial sophistication over Spielberg's phony dreamland any day.

No, wait - I can say more (of course). What kept coming back to me during War Horse was the fact that its horse-puppets (designed by South Africa's Handspring Puppet Company), though utterly convincing in their incredibly detailed motion, were nevertheless always and obviously puppets - you could see right through their transparent skins, in fact, to the men nestled inside, pulling every lever and turning every gear, and bracing for the moment when some actor or other would leap onto their shoulders for a ride. The "horses" existed in two perceptive "valences," if you will - one as machine, and another as living, breathing - yet imaginary - being.

The same dichotomy prevailed throughout the scenery-free production (the motif of which was rough sketches done by the young hero), although in its circular playing space - its postmodern "wooden O" - War Horse powerfully evoked the vasty fields of France (and England) just as Shakespeare did in Henry V. Indeed, in the famous prologue to that play, the Bard put his finger on the artistic crux of the theatre - "Let us," the Chorus pleads, "ciphers to this great accompt / on your imaginary forces work."

Ah, our imaginary forces - how much more powerful imagination can be than mere illusion! And how powerful, and mysteriously rich, are the sensory experiences we summon from within ourselves! Evocation is so much more potent than illusion, in fact, that the theatre need make no apology for its supposed paucity before the blandishments of cinema. I can believe that Spielberg's War Horse will be shattering, and stunning, and all those other things movies have wanted to be since cinematic history began. But will it stir our imaginations? Somehow I doubt it, because film, at least these days, inevitably strives to impress rather than evoke.

And the engagement of imagination is what theatre will always have "over" the silver screen. Which isn't to say movies can never manage the same trick - but it takes a lot; the movie screen is famously "flat" unless it's goosed along with music, effects, and superb editing and camera placement; unless a director can induce a kind of dream-state in the audience, his film will be stillborn. Oddly enough, truly evocative magic is often conjured in film by simulating the conventions of the theatre - think of Citizen Kane with its deep-focus, stage-like spaces in which the Mercury Theatre actors move; even the jumps between close-up and panorama which we think of as essentially cinematic are actually perceptual outgrowths of Shakespeare's fluid shifts from pageant to soliloquy to aside. (Intriguingly, when War Horse wants to tamp down its evocative wattage, and simply impress us with its carnage, it resorts to slow-motion "cinematic" sequences.)

But why is film so flat-footed next to theatre? Oddly, it may have something to do with the fact that in theatre, the mechanical apparatus - the valence of "actuality" - is always obvious. You can see the strings on the puppets, and the men inside the horse - we are aware of the live presence of the magician, and our connection to him. In movies, by way of contrast, the strings are hidden, and the illusion complete - but this makes the illusion impenetrable, and unengaging; in effect, we have to be lulled to a kind of perceptual sleep to be moved by it, to "accept" its fantasy as our own. But in theatre, we can remain wide awake while dreaming, and that fact makes theatre incredibly freeing, and thrilling, when done right - and it can be done right with unbelievably simple means.

The resulting effects, however, are anything but simple; they can include so much more than cinema can achieve. An electrifying scene in War Horse, for example, is the one in which the young lad Albert finally teaches the growing Joey to accept a rider; the sequence wraps with a wild gallop on horseback - something that you'd think is "beyond" the capability of the theatre to evoke. Yet in War Horse, the audience experienced not only the thrill of forward motion - a staple of the cinema, from The Great Train Robbery to Avatar - but also so much more: we felt the rush of the wind, and the surge of the horse's body, even the pounding of our own lungs. And that's because we weren't dreaming - we were living.

Thoughts on the London audience

A concert at Royal Albert Hall. For a ukulele symphony.

My brother often reminds me that London, not New York (and certainly not Paris), is the musical, and perhaps the cultural, capital of the world. Out and about in Paris and London during our recent trip, it was hard to disagree with him. There's not much "serious" culture going on in Paris in the summer - both the Bastille and the Palais Garnier were dark while we were there, and I was dismayed to discover that Les hommes viennent de Mars, les femmes de Vénu had been the big hit of the spring.

What one is supposed to do in Paris on a summer evening, of course, is not go to the theatre, but eat, drink, stroll, and people-watch, all of which we were happy to do, especially as we were blessed by gorgeous weather that made those long twilights even more magical than usual. We did catch one or two light classical concerts in churches and parks, but none of these was particularly edifying - as they were situated in locales like Sainte-Chapelle, however, that hardly mattered.

London was a different story. The Royal Opera House at Covent Garden was in full swing with a visit from the Bolshoi Ballet, which I hadn't seen for years. Meanwhile the Proms were packing them in at Royal Albert Hall, and the National and the West End were likewise going full tilt. I know this may shock you, but I didn't actually see that much theatre - I only caught the National's blockbuster production of War Horse, a show that in its evocation of living, breathing horses brought "puppetry" to a stunning new level. Don't wait for the movie on this one (Spielberg has it in development) - the only way to experience War Horse is on stage, for reasons I'll explain in a future post. When it finally reaches Broadway, it will blow the latest crop of New York pseudo-events (like Gatz) off the stage.


The "puppets" of War Horse.

I was torn away from the theatre for my remaining two nights in town because I've always wanted to attend the Proms, and because the Bolshoi was in town. They were doing Spartacus, one of their "warhorses," and probably the butchest ballet ever made - so butch it's almost camp in spots. But it also features the greatest, or at any rate the most challenging, male dancing in the story-ballet repertory, and it's a famous showcase for the Bolshoi's bigger-than-life, savagely grand style.

I caught the company's newest star, Ivan Vasiliev (below), in the title role, and it was hard to shake the feeling, as I watched his performance, that I was watching perhaps the single greatest ballet dancer in the world. The role itself is unbelievably punishing, with leap after leap, tour after tour, all set to Khachaturian's rapid-fire tom-tom beat, but not only did Vasiliev never tire, he seemed to jump higher and leap further with each passing scene. And the lifts - I can't even tell you how difficult the many lifts in the work's central pas de deux are; for most of the duet, Vasiliev was actually carrying around his partner in mid-air. It was simply a superhuman performance, one for the history books.


Ivan Vasiliev as Spartacus.

My evening at Proms wasn't quite so exciting. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales was essaying a long program that included Shostakovich's massive Seventh Symphony (the "Leningrad"), as well as Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, and Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto. All the performances were solid, but only the Prokofiev caught fire, largely due to pianist Alexander Toradze's spectacular performance (when Toradze next plays Boston, beg, borrow or steal to see him). Conductor Thierry Fischer brought subtlety and balance to the Shostakovich, but seemed to miss the sense of savagery that's so characteristic of this composer, and necessarily animates the endlessly marching build of the first movement.

I have to confess what struck me most about Proms, however, was the audience, not the performance. Royal Albert Hall holds close to 6,000 people, and it was packed to the rafters - with some thousand or so attendees standing in the center of the hall through the two-and-a-half-hour performance. Without real air conditioning. Through all this, however, they were silent and attentive, and roared their approval at the finish - for a program that would have faced open walk-outs, as well as a barrage of coughing, at the BSO. At intermission, the people in my stall - strangers to one another - chatted in a lively fashion with each other about the various pieces, with which they were obviously familiar. It occurred to me that I'd seen the same behavior at the Bolshoi - again, the Royal Opera House was entirely sold out, including all the standing room "seats" around the balconies, with people even packed up beneath the arches of the ceiling. And neither crowd was entirely posh - indeed, the Proms audience was largely middle class, and there were plenty of staid British matrons in sensible shoes at the Bolshoi, too. Needless to say, War Horse was sold out as well - even though it's been playing, off and on, for over two years.

I had to wonder to myself - how did London build this audience, so educated, genteel, and committed to high culture? And why can't we do the same thing in America?