War Horse

War Horse was just as everyone said – fantastic, and don’t miss it.  Oh, I was planning on going a second time until the end of the first show, at which time I said to Greg, I don’t think I can do that twice, in two days.  Too intense.  He agreed.  But now it is day three and I am looking for a way to go back.  When we were buying our tickets, there were some medium priced ones, and some of the economy tickets.  Look, said the guy at the ticket wicket, if you buy the cheaper tickets you can go twice.  Now he is our kind of ticket-wicket personnel.

What was fantastic about it.  For one, the omniscient narrator is a peasant with an accordion, who has a violinist at his side.  He moved the plot along with another verse of the play’s theme song.  He was found on stage, placing the actors in their correct positions before the action started, heard singing as he walked along the theatre isles, or stood back by the exit. That was cool. 

There is a significant portion of the play done in German, since the horse in question is captured by the Germans.  I liked the fact that the actors could keep the English speakers still enthralled in the events going on, just with gesture and mime.  I had the first seat in the house – row A, far left.  That is where there was a foxhole, so at the intermission, the stage hands took away part of the stage.  When I came back – there it was at my feet – I could have reached out and touched the actors.  I have no idea why that seat was worth less than other seats in the house.  To me it was worth more.

I was so close to the stage that I could see the faces of the people moving the puppets – the same people who made horse noises.  Wyona was entranced, for she has been teaching Ivan how to do dog talk, and now both she and I will take that to a second level with our grandchildren, for we got the idea of how to make horse sounds.  She was already practising some of them of them on the way home.

Arta