In the collection of the Imperial War Museum are letters written by soldiers on the front line to their loved ones back home. One striking letter complains of the lack of imagination of the generals who could not see that if a defense of barbed wire were to be blasted by artillery the effect was simply that it would be sent up into the air and land in an even more impenetrable mass than before. My aesthetics tutor at the time, the very wise Andrew Harrison, thought that a morally culpable lack of imagination would be a good subject for a PhD. I didn’t go on to do one, but tucked away in my back pocket the idea that this would make a good subject for a play. If Michael Morpurgo didn’t actually make this the theme of his book, in Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris’s production (adapted by Nick Stafford and revived here by Alex Sims) that bitter observation by a Tommy forms one of the central, pivotal and memorable scenes of the play as the ill-fated charge into the enemy lines meets a storm of bullets with the cry, “There’s no way through!”
This tour of the National Theatre production is a complete triumph. The beautifully articulated and operated puppets need no further praise from me. To see is to believe. Many years ago I was a horse myself….
’ I beg your pardon, what was that?
…Bloody cheek – both halves!
Sorry about that. Where was I? Ah yes, I was in the National Theatre production of Equus (about a boy who communicates with and through horses before blinding them) playing a horse and during rehearsal we spent a lot of time observing horses. The point was to get the detail right. In this production detail is everything as far as the puppets go. One feels the weight, the sensitivity of these noble creatures. A twist of the head, a flick of the tail or ear, all help round out the characterisation. And if Albert (Lee Armstrong) could form a relationship with a puppet so could we, the audience. Who needs realism when most of the work is done by our own imaginations?
As in other works by Morpurgo, war is not about the tectonic plates of international politics, but the human cost for all concerned (Private Peaceful, An Elephant in the Garden). In this story the ‘star’ of the show, Joey (alternately three of a team on nine puppeteers) is put to service for both antagonists, the war is seen from both perspectives, which turn out to be pretty similar – a mix of militaristic bravado and humanity.
Without missing a step the action moves from rural Devon to Belgium, from farmyards to battlefields, sea crossings and cavalry charges. Nothing is amiss. The backdrop, a torn piece of paper by way of screen, a metaphor for the torn land and torn lives the war has created. The projections which evoke the lost innocence of the rural life, as in Thomas’s, Adlestrop. The animations which sketch in the devastating cannonades and their aftermath. The soundscapes of terrible ironies, with the skylarks and thunder from hell. The pointed songs of John Tams, sung by Bob Fox (who sounds not unlike Tams). The music of Adrian Sutton, by turns pastoral and dramatic, all of it serving the story as it unfolds.
Dramatic irony runs through the play like a steel scaffold with the main beam, the irony that had he not struggled to pull the plough on the farm Joey would have ended up as whatever passed at the time for beef lasagna. Then little bits of humorous irony as Ted is goosed by a goose. But it is that former irony which paves the way for the final emotional homecoming and the welcome release the audience by now craves.
The directors have learned that fundamental lesson of theatre (known indeed by striptease artists) that to suggest is often more powerful than to show. Morris’s other revival, Swallows and Amazons, bears this out. He has become a master of imaginative stagecraft and like Orson Welles, who brought Moby Dick to the London stage some half century ago, he relishes making the seemingly impossible possible. Total war calls for total theatre and in this production the two are well matched. ★★★★★ Graham Wyles 15/01/15
