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War Horse: ‘I forget that Joey is being manipulated by people. They’re breathing, making sounds and moving like a horse would’

A new stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s beloved novel brings the kinship of boy and beast alive in a triumph of theatrical storytelling

War Horse: Tom Sturgess as Albert Narracott, who forms a bond with Joey, the horse, that sustains them both through the violence of battle. Photograph: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg
War Horse: Tom Sturgess as Albert Narracott, who forms a bond with Joey, the horse, that sustains them both through the violence of battle. Photograph: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg

Up on the stage, a chestnut colt is nickering nervously, unwilling to be reined. Bred to be a hunting horse, he has been bought to plough the fallow fields of a Devon farm. He whinnies in protest against the leather harness, bucks his forelegs as the bridle is secured. With the bit in his mouth, he rears and kicks his hind hooves, determined to resist. In the end it isn’t physical restraint that calms him but the gentling voice of his new owner, 15-year-old Albert Narracott.

This inhospitable beginning begets a bond that sustains them both through the violence of domestic and military battles. Boy and beast, man and animal: the relationship is the basis of an authentic kinship.

If the connection between Albert and his horse, which he names Joey, seems far-fetched, an imaginative stretch, millions of readers, film lovers and theatregoers would disagree. It provides the central plot for War Horse, the beloved 1982 novel by the lauded British author Michael Morpurgo. Adapted for the stage in 2007, it has become one of the most celebrated shows in the repertoire of Britain’s National Theatre, as well as the foundation of Steven Spielberg’s 2011 filmed version.

This month the production comes to Ireland. Nick Stafford’s script remains unchanged, but a new cast brings a vivid, fresh interpretation to the work where women’s experiences of the first World War are brought out of the shadows and the world of the battlefield is expanded through the possibilities of digital projection of drawings by Rae Smith, the original designer. What the audience will surely remember, however, is the unbridled love between Albert and Joey, whose embodiment on stage is a masterclass in theatrical storytelling.

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Tom Sturgess, the actor playing Albert, saw the first touring production of War Horse more than a decade ago, on a family visit to his local theatre, the Lowry on Salford Quays in Manchester. Coincidentally, this is where we meet to talk about the new production. Sturgess was only 11 at the time, so he doesn’t remember much about the play itself, he says, but he does recall the scale of it. The production “felt massive, bigger than anything I had seen before. It was in this huge auditorium, and the building itself was so big, so what I remember is this huge sense of grandiosity”.

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The experience helped to shape his ambition; after graduating from drama school in 2019, he was immediately cast in the West End, contracted to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which he played in for a year (after the interruption of the pandemic). Getting another gig with such an extensive performance schedule is “a bit of a luxury”, he says. But it also poses the challenge of how to “connect to something artistically that you are going to be doing for so long – eight shows a week for 10 months”.

Sturgess’s trick to keep his War Horse performance fresh is “to notice something new in everyone each day, to think less about myself and more about what everyone else is doing”. It also helps, Sturgess says, that most of his scenes are played opposite a puppet, which is operated not by just one cast member but by four teams of three actors.

“Every team is completely different,” he explains. “So, show by show, you are building a relationship with a different horse. It is the same character, but each Joey has a different personality, based on the group of three, and that definitely helps to keep it alive for me. I can’t go into autopilot. I have to respond to what is being offered.”

War Horse: the cast in rehearsals. Photograph: Pamela Raith
War Horse: the cast in rehearsals. Photograph: Pamela Raith
War Horse: the cast in rehearsals. Photograph: Pamela Raith
War Horse: the cast in rehearsals. Photograph: Pamela Raith

Sturgess’s training for working with the equine ensemble began in auditions, when he was “completely star-struck doing the scene”.

“But there was this moment when Joey stopped being a puppet: he just became real. And that is what happens for the audience, too: Joey comes on stage and they see the horse and the three puppeteers manipulating him, but then there is a moment – and you don’t even realise – but all of a sudden the horse is real before your eyes.

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“That happens to me on stage, as well: I forget that Joey is being manipulated by people. They’re breathing like a horse, making sounds and moving like a horse would, so you start interacting with them like you would with any horse. But, like any horse would, they also ignore you, and by rooting [Joey’s behaviour] in the reality of how a horse might behave, it becomes more than a device to pull an emotional response out of you. By playing the truth of a horse, it becomes something real.”

Tea Poldervaart is one of the actors playing Joey in the two incarnations we see on stage: we meet Joey as a colt, as well as in his fully-grown form. Poldervaart explains the reasoning behind the trebling of actors.

“The horses have a lot of weight to them,” he says, “so there’s a very physical workout every time you go on stage. The head” – which Poldervaart plays – “is just under 8kg, and the heart and hind is 44kg in weight – and that doesn’t take into account an actor sitting on top and having to gallop across the stage. And you are carrying that for two hours through every performance, so you really need to be fit and you really need to be comfortable and safe.”

Splitting the role between teams is a way of ensuring that.

“With our Joey it feels like we are mirroring Albert’s youth and innocence, his childlike wonder. Our Joey is very interested in the world. So in the first half he is very chirpy and happy, and open to everything. And that has such an impact then when he gets sent over to war: it’s like seeing a child in those environments.”

War Horse: Tom Sturgess as Albert Narracott. Photograph: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg
War Horse: Tom Sturgess as Albert Narracott. Photograph: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg
Joey the horse and author Michael Morpurgo. Photograph: Jason Lock
Joey the horse and author Michael Morpurgo. Photograph: Jason Lock

He describes the different functions of the different parts of the animal both technically and emotionally. “With each position on the horse we all have roles and emotional indicators. So for me, as the head, I’m giving the gaze and focus of the animal. Heart is really selling the breath, the life‚ of the puppet. Hind is like the engine, the driving force.” Ultimately, “it’s really all about working together”.

This is something that the show’s directors emphasised as they readied the cast for this tour. Katie Henry, who’s directing this revival, and Matthew Forbes, its puppetry director, have long histories with the show: Henry joined for its first West End transfer; Forbes played Joey for three years. Although they have extensive knowledge of the production, they were keen, as Henry explains, “to accommodate the freshness of coming at it again with a whole set of new people”.

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There are more women in this new production, including Sally Swanson, who plays the Singer, and whose rich folk voice brings a distinct feminine frame to the masculine world of war as it was in 1914, reminding the audience “what happened to the women left at home, what happened to the communities ripped apart when the men were sent off to war and didn’t come back”.

Forbes sums up the puppets’ ongoing role in enabling our deep engagement with Morpurgo’s story. “By using puppets,” he says, “we are inviting the audience to engage their imaginations in bringing Joey to life.”

If, as the adage goes, the audience is the central character in any piece of theatre, that’s doubly true with War Horse. “The response to Joey’s journey is so strong because the audience have been so invested in helping to create him.”

War Horse is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, from Wednesday, January 29th, until Saturday, February 1st