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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: The fine art of tearjerking

April 15, 2011 by ldemanski

Once again, I’m climbing out on a limb and panning–kind of, sort of–what I suspect is going to be the popular favorite of the current Broadway season, Lincoln Center Theater’s transfer of the London production of War Horse. Here’s an excerpt.
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Horse1190.jpg“War Horse” was a big hit in London, and it will be a big hit at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater. It can’t fail, and it shouldn’t. Never again will you see such visually poetic, technically self-assured craftsmanship as is on near-continuous display in this large-cast stage version of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 children’s novel about the adventures of a horse called Joey–played onstage by a life-sized puppet–who is sold to the British cavalry in 1914 and shipped to France, where he is ridden into battle and lost behind enemy lines. Anyone who fails to respond to “War Horse” on the level of pure spectacle simply doesn’t like theater.
Unfortunately, there’s a catch, and it, too, is big: “War Horse” is the most shameless piece of tearjerking to hit Broadway since “The Sound of Music.” If that doesn’t stop you in your tracks, buy your tickets now. Otherwise, read on and be forewarned.
The synopsis of “War Horse” with which this review began is all you need to know about the events of the play, which is a straight-off-the-rack pageant of sibling rivalry, youthful rebellion, crazy courage and folk songs. Since critical etiquette forbids the revelation of surprises, even when they’re not surprising, suffice it to say that what happens thereafter is a cross between “Black Beauty” and “Saving Private Ryan.” Small wonder that Steven Spielberg is turning “War Horse” into a movie–only without the puppetry. That, however, will be like performing “La Bohème” without the music, since the puppetry is the point of the show. All of the animals in “War Horse” are “played” by puppets whose operators are visible to the audience, and it is this deliberate renunciation of conventional theatrical illusion that enables the poetry. You know that Joey and his fellow horses are mechanical dummies, but they are manipulated with such uncanny sensitivity that words like “realism” and “naturalism” quickly fade into irrelevance….
So…what’s not to like? The fundamental flaw of “War Horse” is that Nick Stafford, who wrote the script “in association” (that’s how the credit reads) with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company, has taken a book that was written for children and tried to give it the expressive weight of a play for adults. Not surprisingly, Mr. Morpurgo’s plot can’t stand the strain. Dramatic situations that work perfectly well in the context of the book play like Hollywood clichés onstage….
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Read the whole thing here.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

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About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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