smallhobbit | War Horse

The reason we were up in London last weekend was because I had promised TD I would take her to see War Horse for her birthday when it returned to the National Theatre. Her birthday was last June, but at least we booked the tickets then. In fact, booking was so busy the day it opened, I had to give her my login details and get her to book the tickets, saying I'd pay her back. She phoned me to say she could get two seats, one in front of the other, if that was okay, which I agreed with since we didn't need to sit next to each other. And it turned out she had a front row seat, and I was one seat back, so we did rather well all weekend.

We saw War Horse together just over three years ago - also for TD's birthday, but this time actually on her birthday. I've just reread my thoughts of the production at the time, and would say I enjoyed it more this time. Maybe I knew what to expect, maybe I've grown used to more different performances, or most likely I wasn't watching purely for the story, but could appreciate the show in its entirety.

The horse puppets are amazing, incredibly well manipulated, and worth seeing for themselves. I think the actors conveyed the characters better this time, and in particular the actor playing Albert Narracott was good. There seemed to be more emotion this time round, and maybe that's in part because of the timing, since they brought the production back to London deliberately for the Armistice centenary.

I definitely enjoyed seeing the play, and was glad to have seen it again. I would say I preferred the Wipers Times, but that's purely personal preferrence of how the subject matter was portrayed. Both were good.