War Horse

Good Evening people! today was my sisters 18th birthday so we went out for a meal, I had chicken New York and a fudge cake and it was amazing! then we saw the stage show of War horse, a novel written by Michael Morpurgo who I have actually met... he's really down to earth.

This show is based on the relationship between a horse called Joey and a boy called Albert. Money becomes tight and the father sells the horse to the army at the brink of WW1, as Joey faces the brutality of war Albert soon joins in a desperate mission to find Joey.
What's really nice about this story is that it is not biased towards the sides fighting, Joey actually spends a lot of time in British, German and French hands and that introduces an interesting yet odd aspect of the languages... usually they either speak English or have subtitles but this didn't so for about 20 minutes we had a mixture of German and French which was strange because I didn't understand what they were saying but their actions and movements made it a tad clearer.

The story itself was a bit far fetched, I mean who would risk life and limb for a horse; although that sounds selfish... its true. However it did work very well because it really focused a lot on their relationship and I guess like a pet dog you just get attached and it does form a sweet friendship that surprisingly ends well... I thought it would have been another Marley and Me moment (No thank you!)

The one thing that ruined the whole thing was in fact the audience! ok when the ticket and website says the show will start at 7 you get into the cinema and into your chair at 7 not 10 minutes later, this film started on time and 10 minutes into it we had a flood of about 20 people coming in and then to top it all off a lot of people were in the wrong seats... how difficult is it to read 1 letter and 1 number. Come on people! everyone was sat down by 7:20 so that annoyed me a lot (super annoying!)

The 2 main highlights that I am going to talk about is the puppetry and the singing. I actually didn't know there was singing but it was beautiful, like country but softer. The guy who sang was amazing and he would just appear on stage randomly disguised as one of the soldiers or one of the citizens but the songs themselves were really nice to listen to, I like that type of music because its relaxing but I never knew there was any singing so that really surprised me.
The puppetry of the horses was outstanding, it was so unique and brilliant! the movement of the horses were unreal and what I did really like was that the puppeteers were visible I thought that was interesting. When you see Joey as a foal the puppetry is ok but the puppet has less detail but as soon as he grows up the horse just looks amazing, the leg movement impressed me the most as well as the sounds that came from the actors controlling Joey, I can't do a good horse impression but what was really cool is that all the actors participated in creating the noises for Joey.

The show was great, a bit slow at the start but it was an interesting development and the puppets really stood out and made the show a lot better. The actors were really good although some of their accents got a bit annoying however they all did a great job and the use of different languages really baffled me and I really wish I knew what they were saying but it was an interesting aspect to the show that was unexpected. Surprisingly the show is quite different compared to the film and I'll be honest I did prefer the film. Nonetheless the stage show was great but I feel that seeing it live would have been a lot better.
Overall I give it a 7/10
The cast were good
The puppetry was amazing
And the singing was fantastic

However...

Some of the characters became a bit annoying
Some of the humour didn't work for me (although some of it was funny)

Well I hope you enjoyed
I have some good post's lined up like Inception and a new thing I'm going to introduce are product reviews, I collect a lot of props and replicas so I thought it might be cool to show them off and give you my view.
Thanks
Until next time :)