The first thing to marvel at in War Horse, the import from London that has just opened at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, is, of course, the horse. He’s a tall, chestnut-colored steed named Joey, embodied onstage by a life-size puppet manipulated by three fully visible puppeteers. A latticework of cane strips creates the effect of an exoskeleton, covering a leathery hide and forming a maze of gears and joints that animate the horse’s legs and neck. The result is amazingly lifelike and expressive: Joey rears, snorts, nuzzles, preens; his tail slaps at flies; his chest even heaves after a heavy workout. It’s all the product of South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company — whose stage menagerie here also includes birds waved around on rods by actors and a nosy goose rolled across the stage on a wheelie. Has Julie Taymor seen this show? It might remind her of the low-tech wonders she created for The Lion King but largely abandoned for the high-tech daredevilry of Spider-Man.
The next thing that may strike a seasoned theatergoer about War Horse is how full the stage is. More than 30 actors! Portraying everything from a farming community in Devon to the battlefields of France in World War I. It’s the sort of epic theater that could only come from Britain, where state-supported institutions like the National Theatre can really think big. Gathering more than five or six actors on a stage in New York City — at least for a show without stars, songs or a presold brand — is all but financially prohibitive.
Part of the pleasure of War Horse is seeing the impossible-to-stage made plausible in the most economical and inventive ways: great battles evoked simply by a blinding flash of light, a roar of a cannon, or an interlude of slow motion or stop-action. And the cast is nearly perfect. Is War Horse too sentimental? Perhaps. But there’s not a moment in its compact two and a half hours when I wasn’t fully engaged, moved and inspired by the theatrical imagination on display. And thrilled by a landmark theater event.
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