War Horse GALLOPS rescue TO THE
War Horse (NT at Home) Verdict: Saddle up and ride! ★★★★★ Julie (NT at Home) Verdict: Thin and tawdry ★★III
Now Lockdown 3 is upon us, you may worry that theatrical rations will start to run low. Fear not! we still have plenty in our stockpile, with a good supply of new material promised on various websites.
Take the National Theatre’s digital NT at Home ( ntathome.com). Here, you can find perhaps the greatest theatrical production of the past two decades: war Horse.
I’d been saving this for a rainy day, but I think we can safely assume that day has come. After all, who among us does not feel a bit like Michael Morpurgo’s stallion, drafted into battle and made to drag cast-iron cannons through the fields of France during world war I? But it’s also a story of redemption, and we can all use a bit of that hay to chew on.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw the life-size puppet of Joey, the Devonshire horse, on stage at the National Theatre. It was a moment that still takes my breath away — and the good news, for those who’ve never had the pleasure, is that it loses little of its magic on the small screen.
Joey is never at rest: breathing, twitching, shuddering, galloping; radar- ears revolving, tail swishing away imaginary flies.
The three actors who operate Joey (two inside working the legs, one out front controlling the head) seem to vanish after a couple of minutes. MARIANNE elliott and Tom Morris’s ground-breaking production is assisted by lighting that brings the puppets to life (five horses and a rogue goose).
There is lush pastoral music for the scenes in Devon, shrill brass for the alarms of war, and sweet yearning folk songs that console throughout.
The human characters do well, too; with Alistair Brammer steadfast in his devotion to Joey, through family feuds and German gunfire.
Ian Shaw’s German soldier redeems the Huns, through his love of Joey on the other side of the trenches. And who can resist Paul Hawkyard’s windsor Davies-esque Sgt Thunder?
Arguably too much Deutsch gets sprechen in the second half; and the chaos of battle can become confusing. But war Horse remains emotionally engrossing through every scene. Please don’t miss it — it will gallop off screens on wednesday.
LeSS uplifting, but also on NT at Home, is Polly Stenham’s play Julie. It’s based on August Strindberg’s notoriously brutal battle of the sexes in 19th-century Sweden, Miss Julie. Stenham shifts it to a millionaire’s mansion in Hampstead, where our Trustafarian heroine Julie (Vanessa Kirby) is celebrating her 33rd birthday with enough booze and cocaine to take out the Household Cavalry. Still just about sentient, she has her lurching libido trained on Daddy’s chauffeur.
Carrie Cracknell’s production manages to be both prissy and squalid, with eric Kofi Abrefa’s chauffeur Jean shorn of his character’s predatory, self- serving misogyny; and Kirby’s Julie reduced to an addict in freefall whose mantra is ‘money, money, money . . . and then you die’.
There’s a grisly encounter with a Kitchen Aid food processor in an all-white set that looks like a morgue. orgiastic dancing creates some passing interest, but it amounts to thin, tawdry, moralising melodrama.
There is plenty more colourful fare on other websites, though.
Digital Theatre ( digitaltheatre. com) is featuring David Suchet and Zoe wanamaker in Arthur Miller’s harrowing postwar drama All My Sons; Anna Chancellor and Toby Stephens in Noel Coward’s zingy couples’ comedy Private Lives; and Suranne Jones in Jonathan Harvey’s coming out play, Beautiful Thing.
on Marquee TV ( marquee.tv) meanwhile, there’s a wealth of Shakespeare from the rSC in Stratford, including Antony Sher as Falstaff in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and David Tennant in richard II.
And thespie.com has links to loads of shows and musicals across multiple websites.
I, however, will be exploring Broadway HD, to find out what our U.S. friends have to offer. Next week I have my eye on Kevin Kline in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. Happy foraging.