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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2018 10:35:33 GMT
I still don’t know how I managed to get tickets for the Armistice Day anniversary matinee of this. But anyway, it always felt like a gap in my theatre-going and I wanted to rectify that.
I loved it for the horses and the battle scenes. Genuine coup de theatres and I can now draw a line from this play to the staging of several others. I even wondered if the wooden horses in Don Quixote were a bit of a theatrical in-joke. Multiple hairs standing on end moments that I will likely never forget.
But man, the story? This is basic, story-telling by numbers stuff. It’s really unsophisticated. I think whoever spotted this could actually make good theatre was very clever (bit like the person who turned that terrible book Q&A into Slumdog Millionaire) because the spectacle masks a lot. Well done them for getting some women into a story about the battles of WW1, but it was frustrating to meet characters and not have their stories closed.
I agree with whoever said upthread that some of the performances are a bit am-dram. The father? Crikey. That was some sub-Wurzel Gummage West Country acting.
It still gets five stars from me though.
Oh, this should really go in the Bad Behaviour thread, but all of the parent who took four and five year olds to this? You are all insane.
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Post by Lemansky on Nov 22, 2018 17:17:45 GMT
I'm going with the family to see this on Saturday for the matinee. I've seen it before, but no one else I'm going with has. It's a BSL performance, which I've never been to. Has anyone been to a signed performance in the Lyttleton before, I'd be intrigued to know how they do it.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 22, 2018 20:59:29 GMT
I saw the first ever performance of War Horse
When they gave me a free ticket
Due to initial lack of sales
And look what it became then
This is the first time since then I have seen it again
Cannot believe it’s 11 years ago
The show is without any doubt
One of the most complete pieces of performance to come out of the NT in its history
No other show I have seen in 20 years there
Will have this level of universal appeal
Demonstrated by the 7.2 million people who have seen it around the world
Seeing the performance tonight
Brings back memories of the NT at its peak
It was no coincidence
The three biggest successes
In their history
Critically
Financially
And awards wise
Were all
In NH regime
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Post by Jan on Nov 23, 2018 11:24:15 GMT
Brings back memories of the NT at its peak It was no coincidence The three biggest successes In their history Critically Financially And awards wise Were all In NH regime Peter Hall: Amadeus, The Mysteries, Guys and Dolls |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2018 11:43:25 GMT
Brings back memories of the NT at its peak It was no coincidence The three biggest successes In their history Critically Financially And awards wise Were all In NH regime Peter Hall: Amadeus, The Mysteries, Guys and Dolls War horse ran for 3000 performances In the WE alone And over 700 on Broadway Amadeus did 181 shows there Your list is hardly Comparable Curious incident ran for over 1600 west end performances In the intial outing alone And 800 on broadway |
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Post by stevemar on Nov 23, 2018 11:56:31 GMT
I saw the first ever performance of War Horse When they gave me a free ticket Due to initial lack of sales And look what it became then This is the first time since then I have seen it again Cannot believe it’s 11 years ago The show is without any doubt One of the most complete pieces of performance to come out of the NT in its history No other show I have seen in 20 years there Will have this level of universal appeal Demonstrated by the 7.2 million people who have seen it around the world Seeing the performance tonight Brings back memories of the NT at its peak It was no coincidence The three biggest successes In their history Critically Financially And awards wise Were all In NH regime I saw War Horse during the previews of its first run at the Olivier. I remember that it was still quite rough and ready - despite my obvious criticisms of the quite simplistic storytelling and some pretty poor dialogue, the emotional power of the piece and the marriage of music, creativity with the Handspring, and the fantastic direction and lighting swept those reservations aside for me. I booked to see it straight away in that run, and a year later in the second run. There were actually quite a few issues in the first previews I believe - complaints about messy storytelling, too much dialogue in German, longueurs and even the character of Emilie played by a wooden puppet. All those were changed during the first run and the second run a year later. I have seen it several times since and am looking forward to introducing my family to it in the new year. So, it is quite interesting to see how something which now everyone assumes was an instant success certainly was not, and there were quite major changes to the play. It was a major risk which could have failed. At least the National and the subsidised theatre could experiment with that. It has raised the bar for plays at the National and has been a huge commercial and artistic success for them. There is a tendency now to judge a play much more quickly - would War Horse work in development with the unforgiving nature of criticism now or the commercial pressures it faces, or even (as the point seems to be made) under the current artistic director? Would it even be commissioned now? |
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Post by Jan on Nov 23, 2018 12:53:29 GMT
Peter Hall: Amadeus, The Mysteries, Guys and Dolls War horse ran for 3000 performances In the WE alone And over 700 on Broadway Amadeus did 181 shows there Your list is hardly Comparable Curious incident ran for over 1600 west end performances In the intial outing alone And 800 on broadway You are wrong. Amadeus did 1181 shows on Broadway, many more than your examples. Equus did 1209 on Broadway, again many more. |
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Post by jek on Nov 24, 2018 10:56:05 GMT
Saw this last night from the second row of the stalls (the £18 tickets). The first time I saw it was in its original run. I won two tickets in a competition in the local paper (along with a copy of the book and a backstage tour) and took my then 11 year old son (he's 21 now and 6ft 5" - how did that happen?) It was a particularly magical night for us. I later saw it again at the New London with my other two kids and my late mum and again we had a fantastic time. I was therefore slightly apprehensive about whether last night would be a bit of a let down. But it wasn't at all. It still felt like a landmark piece of theatre and I especially enjoyed revisiting the design - the way it veers from bucolic pastoral to vorticist mayhem. Shame the music is no longer played live (ironically the child I took back all those years ago is today a very keen and accomplished trombonist - not something I would have predicted back then) but as someone who grew up singing Irish rebel songs at every family occasion the singing is still something special. Particularly enjoyed the performance of the lad who played Billy Narracott (Jasper William Cartwright) and liked the fact that the actor who played Friedrich (Peter Becker) is a German actor.
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Post by Stephen on Nov 24, 2018 17:59:41 GMT
I'm considering returning. I do love the play. The music alone is absolutely beautiful. The original song man was terrific. I wish it was all on Spotify!
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Post by jek on Nov 24, 2018 22:11:12 GMT
I'm considering returning. I do love the play. The music alone is absolutely beautiful. The original song man was terrific. I wish it was all on Spotify! . The current Song Man is Bob Fox a long time folk singer who has been playing the role in War Horse since 2011 (the programme says he is the longest serving Song Man). I was listening to the original cast recording CD this morning and didn't feel that the singing on that was any better. |
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Post by peggs on Dec 16, 2018 16:50:54 GMT
Took my nieces yesterday, we'd got drenched in all the rain earlier in the day getting across London and had skipped trying to do Christmas lights etc because of that and had just moved into the NT for a few hours. They were really thrown by the fact that you could eat at a theatre and that it had wide open spaces (their theatre exposure so far has been a few westend matilda like trips) and rather enjoyed exploring though did give me some failure when they'd gone to the toilets and hadn't re-appeared and I was torn between running round the building like a mad person or trying to sit tight and not panic (queue that relief when kids reappear and you're cross and happy at the same time [they'd missed the better hid toilets and ended up in that endless downstairs lyttelton queue]). So by the time we went in they were rather tired and excited and at least one bit apprehensive. Kudos for NT for giving out cushions for the kids solving one problem. I was surprised at how young some of the children there were, the little boy behind me couldn't have been more than 6/7, he didn't seem at all bothered but talked a lot but since his mother chatted back as if they were in fact in their front room it was hardly his fault.
I saw it first back in it's first run days and hoping they would share some of my wonder at the puppets, the pull on the heartstrings, the cleverness of the staging, the pull of the music. I welled up from the first introduction of Joey that I can only put down to my knowledge of what was going to happen which took me quite by surprise. The was a wonderful moment when small Joey turns into adult Joey and one niece turned to the other and her face was just a picture of wow! I had forgotten quite how hard it was to watch, bits had changed since I first saw it and it turned out I mainly remembered the horse bits than the people and found it grimmer than i'd remembered. By the interval youngest niece was rather superglued hanging onto her sister and I feared she was upset and wouldn't want to come back in but she was thankfully ok. Second half they both spent a fair amount of time with their hands over their ears in the loud bits but with their heads darting to follow what was happening. I found their critiques quite interesting, the saddest bit one said was when the three horse operators left Topthorn's body she said as it was like his soul leaving, the other explained with some pride how the strip of torn drawing had become the white slash across the sky and the pictures on this helped her understand what was happening. Seemed to go down well and neither seemed upset though we did have some death conversations on the way home.
We seemed to identify the NT essentials; it sometimes quicker to go to the sneakily hidden toilets round the building, the shop sells most random things (unicorn snot anyone?), it is a strange building to look at (their thoughts unprompted from me) that you should sit still and be quiet so as not ruin it for those behind you, free water, wifi and handy as a place to hang out.
Remains to be seen if the production itself sticks in their memories but all in all it went quite well and since i'd been anticipating all that could go wrong for months I can now relax.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2018 21:39:22 GMT
peggs loved this. I can’t wait to share my love of theatre with my daughter, and reading this made me even more excited.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2018 22:17:25 GMT
I saw this at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in May, after being handed a free ticket by a complete stranger who I'd been chatting to during a backstage tour of the theatre, and it was the first piece of theatre that properly moved me to tears. I thought the set design was so basic but it worked really well with the different sketch backdrop projections. The ending was touching, and was shortly followed by a huge theatre-wide standing ovation. I feel like on the whole, this is such an underappreciated show. Nobody really talks about it, but the actors are truly workhorses (ha) who work so hard to achieve that level of emotion in the piece, aided by the beautiful music.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2018 22:46:23 GMT
I saw this at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in May, after being handed a free ticket by a complete stranger who I'd been chatting to during a backstage tour of the theatre, and it was the first piece of theatre that properly moved me to tears. I thought the set design was so basic but it worked really well with the different sketch backdrop projections. The ending was touching, and was shortly followed by a huge theatre-wide standing ovation. I feel like on the whole, this is such an underappreciated show. Nobody really talks about it, but the actors are truly workhorses (ha) who work so hard to achieve that level of emotion in the piece, aided by the beautiful music. Not sure it’s under appreciated. More likely that it’s quite old now so the impact is lessened because the things that were novel have been used elsewhere. Also, I believe the tour is a little...faded, perhaps, compared to the original. Quite a few people mentioned it in the “best ever” thread. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2018 23:22:06 GMT
I saw this at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in May, after being handed a free ticket by a complete stranger who I'd been chatting to during a backstage tour of the theatre, and it was the first piece of theatre that properly moved me to tears. I thought the set design was so basic but it worked really well with the different sketch backdrop projections. The ending was touching, and was shortly followed by a huge theatre-wide standing ovation. I feel like on the whole, this is such an underappreciated show. Nobody really talks about it, but the actors are truly workhorses (ha) who work so hard to achieve that level of emotion in the piece, aided by the beautiful music. Not sure it’s under appreciated. More likely that it’s quite old now so the impact is lessened because the things that were novel have been used elsewhere. Also, I believe the tour is a little...faded, perhaps, compared to the original. Quite a few people mentioned it in the “best ever” thread. As I was a first time viewer I went in with no experience of the previous NT/NLT version but it still felt so flawless. I definitely think it’s in the top tier of tours at the moment. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2019 15:10:37 GMT
Returning to London again for limited run from Oct 18, 2019 - Nov 23, 2019.
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Post by beatrice on Jan 17, 2019 23:59:00 GMT
If they're going to keep bringing stuff back that I missed and want to see, I'm going to end up having to move to London.... 🙄🙄🙄 But EXCITING!
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Post by zahidf on Feb 7, 2024 6:20:08 GMT
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Post by littlefan on Feb 7, 2024 9:11:12 GMT
Very happy to read this today. Adored the original production and will absolutely be booking to see this on tour. |
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Post by theatrefan62 on Feb 7, 2024 10:02:54 GMT
Mayflower, Southampton 8th to 19th October 2024
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1,441 posts
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Post by theatrefan62 on Feb 7, 2024 10:16:40 GMT
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Post by firefingers on Feb 7, 2024 20:49:24 GMT
Yes they've been workshopping this, trying to scale it back a bit so it is economical to tour. It required a lot of stage space and a big company and having to pull the international tour during covid caused issues to.
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Post by theatrenerd on Feb 7, 2024 22:02:01 GMT
Yes they've been workshopping this, trying to scale it back a bit so it is economical to tour. It required a lot of stage space and a big company and having to pull the international tour during covid caused issues to. That must explain why Michael Harrison is co-producing this tour given a lot of his shows have gone to smaller theatres, though still are of good quality. |
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Post by theatrefan62 on Feb 7, 2024 22:05:52 GMT
The staging is so key to the show, I hope its not scaled back too much. The play itself isn't anything especially noteworthy on its own.
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Post by willjam39 on Feb 12, 2024 12:28:25 GMT
I was looking forward to it until you said that it was scaling back. The original staging didn't rely on many set pieces apart from the puppets so where is the scale back coming from, unless its the revolve?
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