Theatre Review: The American Clock

Much like, I rather suspect, many other theatre fans I am seeing a lot of Arthur Miller this year. More than I have ever seen in the rest of my life combined. He seems to be everywhere. Or at least everywhere that has ‘Vic’ in its name.

My first dose is the pleasingly unknown (to me) and rarely performed The American Clock, the first in a Miller double header at The Old Vic. Full title, The American Clock: A Vaudeville, the play tells the story of the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression as experienced by one rich New York family, the Baum family, interspersed with a series of scenes set elsewhere - from NYC boardrooms to the Mississippi River (and give the play, I assume, its Vaudeville subtitle since they play out as standalone sketches that occasionally incur on the main narrative).

Is it Miller’s best play? Probably not. The story-to-sketch-and-back-again structure gives everything a very stop-start feeling that strips the main narrative of some of its power and there’s no question that the Baums are nowhere near as strong as protagonists as those in other, more linearly structured, Miller plays. This is no Death of a Salesman (probably for the best, since that’s on at The Young Vic later in the year). But it’s still a really fascinating piece of historical storytelling - though I absolutely disagree with the critics who said it was too exposition heavy - with a lot to say about the Crash and what came later. I also quite enjoy that it wears its politics so proudly on its sleeve: capitalism, especially Big Corporate Capitalism, is very bad and should be stopped immediately. By any other measure this is a great play. It’s just perhaps not a great Arthur Miller play.

It is, though, a great production by absolutely any measure. Rachel Chavkin,  of Hadestown fame, is in the director’s chair and her decisions are whip sharp, technically effective and visually stunning. I suspected this already, but this production more than proves that she is worthy of the ‘visionary’ tag that’s so often attached to her in press releases. The integration of music, both period and Justin Ellington’s contemporary original, and Ann Yee’s similarly diverse choreography is incredible; enhancing and advancing the action as well as fulfilling the ...A Vaudeville subtitle. Chloe Lamford’s set is huge and amazing, the use of an Olivier-esque revolve is really effective and I loved the moment where water falls down over the chalked up stock market numbers and slowly washes them away as the Crash happens. 

I loved the diverse casting too, though the decision to have the actors playing Moe, Rose and Lee Baum change from a white Jewish to a South Asian to an African American family did, for me, lessen the impact of the already fragmented narrative. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really clever way to show the changing face of the American family (and of course who does and doesn’t benefit from The American Dream) and all of the actors involved do a great job. I’m just not sure that the narrative, or maybe more accurately the structure of the narrative, is strong enough to support it. In a different play, I think it would have 100% worked.

Speaking of actors, the group assembled here are spectacularly good. I’m not sure where in London you can see a better cast at the moment to be honest. This is all the more impressive given that absolutely everyone plays multiple parts, in multiple narratives, and has to be able to sing and dance a bit too. 

The highlight is undoubtedly Clarke Peters (stars of The Wire doing Miller being a pleasing microtrend at the two Vics this year) who is magnetic as narrator Robertson, tragic Iowan farmer Taylor and Moe 3. It’s a performance of utter assurance, charisma, anger, sadness and charm and I could have watched it for days. The play is already three hours long but I would have happily sat for much longer if Peters was on the stage. Others worthy of mention (which to be honest is everyone but, y‘know, I’m lazy) are Ewan Wardrop’s scene stealing tap dancing capitalist refusenik - if you’re missing the dancing feet of 42nd Street now it’s closed in the West End then Wardrop’s here for you - Golda Rosheuvel’s heartbreaking Rose 3 and Taheen Modak and Abhin Galeya’s complex father son scenes as Lee 2 and Moe 2 respectively. This cast is squad goals, though. There’s not a weak link.

I really enjoyed and was really technically impressed with The American Clock. A decent play, in an amazing production by a truly visionary director, brought to life by a brilliant cast. My only complaint is that the programme that accompanies it is truly shit. Save your £4. 

The American Clock is at The Old Vic until 30th March.

I sat in seat A4 in the Lilian Baylis circle for this one which cost £21. It’s slightly restricted by a safety rail, but otherwise a really good seat for the price point - I tend to sit there or thereabouts for everything at the OV.

Theatre Review: Babylon Beyond Borders

In 2018, I'd say I spent a notable percentage of my blogging life on trains between Shepherds Bush and the particular bit of Commuterland I live in, iPad balanced precariously on my knee, penning rave reviews of shows at the Bush Theatre. Like, at least 10% if I had to quantify it. I'm therefore somewhat shocked that it's taken until February for this situation to occur in 2019.

For, yes, once again my Bush stan hat is firmly on. Their latest commission, co-commission technically, is Babylon Beyond Borders which, it's more than fair to say, is the most technically ambitious piece of theatre (it's definitively not a play, even show doesn't feel quite right) I've ever seen. Performed live in four separate theatres, in four separate cities (São Paulo, Johannesburg, New York and London), in four separate countries, on four separate continents, in four separate time zones, in more languages than I could count. Obviously, the London audience watches the London section live and the others on a video screen, live streamed via t'interwebz in real time. The potential for technical difficulties is overwhelming. This is not theatre for the faint hearted and it is precisely zero shock to me that it's the babes at the Bush who've decided to have a crack at it.

There's not a plot, though there are many stories. Thematically, the idea couldn't be more timely: the destruction of towers throughout history (from Babylon to Grenfell) as a catalyst and metaphor for the destruction of language and community and an excuse to generally shit all over anyone who is in any way 'other'. It's not subtle. Each segment tells personal stories, heavy on political outrage and pulling no punches as to who's to blame. They're funny too when that feels right. The 'Brexit as flight safety information' segment in the London bit is honestly the most I've laughed on that topic for a long old time. 

Let's talk about the London section, since that was the bit I saw live and in my clearly hugely biased opinion the best bit. Taking Grenfell as their tower story and then the awful disunity caused by Brexit as a wider theme, even as a standalone piece of work it's fantastic. Three professional actresses (Lydia Bakelmun, Carol Walton and Afia Abusham - all brilliant) are joined by a community company of local KICKASS women from all kinds of backgrounds who live locally in Shepherds Bush. I'm not normally someone who jumps for joy at the phrase 'community company' but my goodness it works so well here. All of these amazing, talented women sharing their stories and their dance moves is a joyful sort of chaos that I am so here for. I cried a bit each time they appeared. From an American lady complaining that the British make terrible iced tea (true) to the painful variety of stories of struggling with joint British and not British identities, I was left with a very real sense that this is what theatre should be. Fewer white men, more technicolour women. 

A show this technically nuts, frankly, was always going to have some issues and it's a shame that the tech let the show down a bit during the New York tower story (the towers in question being, of course, the World Trade Centre) when I saw it. I did miss this portion because I feel like the clearly astonishingly talented American singer-actress - of colour - who was telling it had something important to say. But otherwise I was amazed how smoothly director Ruthie Osterman's production came off almost as much as I was by the imagination and vision to conceive it in the first place. Live stream producer Heather Pasfield also surely deserves some kind of medal for pulling - and holding - it all together.  She must have the most stressful job in theatre!

Babylon Beyond Borders is an absolutely superb piece of theatre: completely relevant, so ambitious and pulled off so well. It's also, I would quickly observe, pulled off by a nearly 100% female cast and crew (lighting designer Rajiv Pattani being the token man in the credited team, though the uncredited camera operator keeps him company). On all counts, more of this please.

Babylon Beyond Borders in at the Bush Theatre until 16th February. Which is this Saturday. Sort yourselves out tickets immediately.

My ticket for this one was kindly provided by the Bush and I attended press night. It would otherwise cost you £15. Seating is unreserved - and on press night at least they were frantically bringing in extra chairs from the bar - so sharpen your elbows and get there early.

Theatre Review: Trial By Laughter

There's a line in Trial By Laughter, the new touring production of Ian Hislop and Nick Newman's play about freedom of the press, where one of the main characters says to the other 'But where are the jokes?' As neat summaries of a play in one line of dialogue go, it's one of the best I've seen. Because they're certainly nowhere to be seen in the script of this thumping disappointment of a show.

It gives me no pleasure to write this, by the way. In fact it seems pretty perverse to complain that something that's come from the minds and pens of two of the brains behind Private Eye (Hislop is, of course, editor, Newman his head cartoonist) isn't just unfunny but actively boring. And yet here we are. It's a thing I'm doing.

It's doubly odd because Trial By Laughter has such a promising premise. It tells the largely unknown (or forgotten) story of William Hone, the Regency era satirist who was put on trial for blasphemous libel three times in three days because the cartoons he and collaborator George Cruikshank were publishing offended the Government and Prince Regent. The trials were blatantly biased against him, but Hone was acquitted each time and became something of a public hero. It's a really important, fascinating and very seldom told story in the history of the free press in England. You'd think it would make a similarly compelling play. And yet.

The script that Hislop and Newman have produced to tell this story is definitely not compelling. It is so exposition heavy that I kept expecting Basil Exposition from the Austin Powers films to have a walk on cameo. The tone is very much history lesson rather than piece of entertainment; in fact the whole production reminded me of one of those educational touring companies that you would occasionally get in GCSE history lessons to 'make history come alive'. The result is that the audience, much like a GCSE history class full of teenagers, don't connect and the jokes - such as they are - fall completely flat. On the subject of the jokes, not only are they few and far between they're also just not very good. The Regency obsession with the word 'bum' doesn't play so well anymore I fear. A few mildly amusing lines about 'the French' aside, the funniest scene of the play is a bit of physical comedy to do with people walking into a hanging basket. To put it another way: there was a lot of coughing in the audience and a notable number of empty seats after the interval. Not a good recommendation.

On top of these problems with the play, the production isn't that strong either. Director Caroline Leslie delivers something that's paced reasonably well but that has a number of technical issues that annoyed me. The play contains a number of flashback scenes, which the design of the show fails to make clear (the projected clock neither being particularly obvious nor completely visible from all seats in the theatre in which I saw it - Chichester). The recorded backing track for the court scenes - supposed to be members of the public shouting and laughing from the gallery - doesn't work. It gives the effect of cheap canned laughter which becomes especially cringeworthy when the track laughs but no one in the audience does. Dora Schweitzer's set is clever enough in keeping things moving along, but is otherwise fairly forgettable. I vaguely recall there was music, but couldn't tell you anything about it. And though I understand why a touring production wouldn't use all of Chichester's huge thrust stage, the fact that the front portion wasn't even dressed into the set just looked lazy.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and in the case of Trial By Laughter it comes in the form of a couple of sparkling performances from the young actors in the central roles. Joseph Prowen's Hone is a suitably sympathetic and earnest figure and he manages the huge chunks of dialogue he's required to work through really well. It's a strong performance and an impressive feat of memory to boot. As his sidekick Cruikshank, Peter Losasso comes close to stealing the show with a cheeky and charismatic performance which generates most of the laughs. He is supremely watchable.

Overall, I found Trial By Laughter to be a huge disappointment. A play from two such funny and intelligent people about such an interesting, unknown and important story should just not be as boring and humourless as this - in some ways it's almost an achievement that it is. As a friend of mine summed it up: lots of trial, not so much laughter.

Trial By Laughter is on tour (to Glasgow, Richmond, Milton Keynes and Eastbourne) until 9th March.

I saw this one at Chichester Festival Theatre and sat in F57 in the stalls. It cost £27 and is great value for that (for a better show, anyway).

Theatre Review: Pinter 5

Sometimes there are all kinds of profound reasons why you want to see a show. Sometimes you just want to sit in the warm with a big glass of red wine and stare at Rupert Graves for a couple of hours. Both of these are equally valid.

No prizes for guessing that it was very much the second reason that found me back at the Harold Pinter Theatre for Pinter 5 last night. Pinter 5, that is, that plays once more before closing. So let’s make this snappy shall we?

Pinter 5 is directed by Patrick Marber and made up of three pieces: short play The Room, comedy sketch Victoria Station and Family Voices another, shorter, play.

For me, The Room was by far the least enjoyable. It is exactly what I always thought Pinter was, and exactly why I’d never been to any of his work before this season: pretentious, bleak, slow, impenetrable, paus-y. I can’t even tell you what the plot was because I don’t know. Something about how we don’t communicate maybe? Genuinely not sure. It is, though, immaculately acted - a theme of the night - by the reliably excellent Jane Horrocks and a extremely powerful, if underused, Rupert Graves. Shout out too to fight director Kate Waters for her truly brutal sequence. Not for me, but not unwatchable.

The Room is the entirety of the first act of the production. After the interval things perk up considerably. Victoria Station is admittedly rather slight but it’s fantastically done. A very funny piece of writing that looks great - such a clever use of Soutra Gilmour’s otherwise domestic revolving set and Richard Howell’s lighting - and is performed brilliantly. It’s a two hander, pitting an effortlessly brilliant Graves (like honestly, it looked to me like I was expending more energy sitting in the audience than he was on the stage) against a joyously exasperated Colin McFarlane. It’s a hugely entertaining - and, thanks to Graves, surprisingly affecting - little thing that I really enjoyed.

Family Voices switches the tone back to black but is a gorgeously sad piece of writing (with an actual, comprehensible set up). It features the performance of the evening from Luke Thallon who effectively plays six characters, by my count, with distinct personalities, voices and mannerisms. Five of these are essentially comedy parts, the sixth - and main - is the big meaty emotional one, and he’s great at them all. It’s a fantastically compelling piece of work, backed up by a tremendously sad and bitter Horrocks and an all too brief, though brilliantly charismatic, cameo from Graves.

Overall, I enjoyed Pinter 5. The quality of work after the interval more than made up for the tedium of the first piece, and it’s never less than brilliantly acted. Worth a look, if you happen to be free on Saturday afternoon.

There’s one more performance of Pinter 5, at The Harold Pinter Theatre, on Saturday 26th January at 2:30. There are tickets.

I sat in seat T1 in the stalls for this (good view, good legroom, annoyingly close to a door onto the street so take your Pinter with a side of central London street noise) which cost £28 via TodayTix.

Theatre Review: Violet

'Kaisa Hammarlund stars in a musical by Jeanine Tesori' is one of the latest entries on my list of phrases that will definitely get me to buy theatre tickets. I mean come on guys, the last time it happened was Fun Home. And that was an absolute triumph for both of these exceptionally talented women.

Whilst Fun Home was something I'd heard of and immediately wanted to see regardless of cast, venue, ticket price or anything else, the newest collaboration between the two is something I'd not heard of at all: the musical Violet.

The plot of Violet - girl with severe facial scarring goes on a cross-USA bus trip to be healed by a TV evangelist, meets a boy and discovers that she never needing healing in the first place - is hardly going to win any awards on its own. The way that it is told in this show, however, elevates it to something really quite lovely, with huge emotional impact and a surprising timeliness. Brian Crawley's book and lyrics are sweet and tender, yes, but they're also never uncomplicated or trite. There's an unflinching honesty to them too, which allows him to capture feelings of being an outsider and being 'ugly'. The pressure of female beauty standards (regardless of any scars you may or may not have) is never far away and Crawley succeeds in both showing how ridiculous they are and how deeply felt they are too, and what the impacts of that can be. Mercifully, he also rings some darkish humour from this line of thought (I loved the line that went something like 'Ingrid Bergman has made a career out of good cheekbones').

Jeanine Tesori's music is a gorgeous hotchpotch of styles of the American south: country, bluegrass, blues, soul and gospel. The score really reflects the literal journey that Violet goes on as well as the idea that the people she meets along the way (love interests Monty and Flick, the latter being black) are introducing newness and change into Violet's life. It's a really clever and successful piece of musical storytelling.

On top of which there are some just absolutely great songs. My favourite is All to Pieces which for me represents the best example of music, lyrics and story coming together as Violet takes Flick and Monty through the individual bits of her body she'd like to change. It's funny at first, but quickly becomes more sinister. Never has the phrase 'love me to pieces' seemed so malignant.

Violet is a co-production between Charing Cross and Japan's Umeda Arts Theatre, directed by Shuntaro Fujita. Fujita has a very clear and confident idea of what this story can be in today's climate and directs with a real sense of care for both the characters and the show. For me, the most impactful artistic decision he takes here is not to show Violet's scar - there is no trick makeup or facial prosthesis to be found on his set. Although it took me a minute to adjust to this, ultimately I felt it gave the story a hundred times the resonance than it would otherwise have had. It plays up and draws out the idea of the ludicrous weight of beauty standards that the book and lyrics also examine. A simple step (and good god I hope it was intentional and not just that someone forgot to put them on the actors in the performance I saw!) but an effective one.

Morgan Large's set - and, I gather, reworking of the performance space in the theatre) is also very effective, bringing the audience in and making great use of a revolve to really show off the cast. Howard Hudson's lighting is great too, with an interestingly frequent and ballsy use of darkness as well as light. It's a good looking thing, this show.

Finally there's the cast, who are excellent to a man, woman and child. I've already mentioned that Kaisa Hammarlund having another go at Jeanine Tesori was the main reason I booked to see this show and she did not disappoint. She's perfectly cast in the titular role: brave, honest, funny and heartbreakingly vulnerable with a voice that owns every note. Easily worth the price of a ticket alone. Jay Marsh, as love interest Flick, is fantastic too. He absolutely nails the cocky swagger of a soldier and the conflict inherent in being a young black man in the American south in the late 1960s, without ever over cooking it. He also has a kickass, achingly soulful voice. In some of the smaller roles, each with a massive solo though, Anjelica Allen and Simbi Akande absolutely shine. These girls can SING. There's morally ambiguous charisma and fun from Kenneth Avery-Clark as the Preacher too (and I love that the show stops short of simplistically making him a villain or anything close to it).

For a show which I didn't know at all and had no expectations of, I was really taken with Violet. It's a sweet but uncompromising show, immaculately performed and cleverly staged, that hits you in all of the feels. It will also make you feel happy, and who  doesn't need that in January?

Violet is at the Charing Cross Theatre until 6th April.

I sat in D10 in the stalls for this show, of which I saw the penultimate preview, and paid £20 via an offer from WhatsOnStage. The seat would normally cost £35.

Theatre Review: Anomaly

One of the (many) things that happened in the wake of Harvey Weinstein being exposed as a massive scumbag, to put it rather mildly, that I found puzzling was the fact that it almost instantly destroyed his wife's fashion business, Marchesa. 

Once an absolute powerhouse of the red carpet and associated thin rich women industry, anyone who was pictured wearing a Marchesa gown was now apparently condoning everything Weinstein had done. Now don't get me wrong, I'm as anti that human stain accumulating any more money as anyone else. But it just seemed odd to me that punishing the career of a woman who happened to have the considerable misfortune to be married to him was completely fine and normal. 

And the furore over Marchesa did give me pause to think, each time another horrific man in a position of power was exposed, what was going to happen to the family he was leaving in his wake?

Apparently this was not as original a thought as I liked to think it was. Because Anomaly, WildChild Productions’ new triple hander at The Old Red Lion Theatre, tackles exactly this question. When a fictional movie mogul falls spectacularly from grace, what happens to the three famous daughters he leaves behind? All have built their lives, for better or worse, around his name and his presence. What will happen to them now that his name is a curse and his presence nonexistent?

It surely goes without saying that this play is a tough watch, I mean the subject matter - privilege, celebrity culture, everyday sexism - is hardly laugh a minute. But it's also gripping, necessary and just a straight up great piece of writing. Liv Warden's script is fantastic, fizzing with energy, ideas and freshness. Her focus on her female characters is laser sharp - men intrude into her space only to remind us that the patriarchy is awful. And the three characters are remarkably diverse and well developed for a play that lasts only just over an hour. 

Philosophically I am so here for a play that tells this sort of story with female voices, all of whom are different and none of whom are just victims. The small, subtle ways that Warden shows that every facet of these innocent women’s lives being open to intense and insane judgement versus the apparent l’aissez faire treatment of their father’s many misdeeds (to a point) is so well done. It’s often utterly depressing in many ways to watch, because it rings so true, but the writing is always so good that you sort of don’t mind. 

There is also humour built in too, predominantly of the pitch black variety that I particularly enjoy. Borrowing very much, I think, from the Mel Brooks school of 'laugh at your enemies, it'll drive them nuts', much of the humour is derived from the nonsense of modern celebrity culture and its treatment of women. It's very much a laugh at, rather than laugh with, sort of thing; Peep Show-esque in its discomfort at times. Nevertheless, it cuts through the darkness and gives the piece a mischievousness that totally works.

The production is top class, remarkably effective for a pub production. Director Adam Small really sets the piece loose in a minimal but clever set (can pub theatre sets be anything else if they're going to actually work?) by Charlotte Dennis. The structure of the play is almost a set of interlocking monologues and lighting designer Holly Ellis brings this together beautifully. The use of recorded voice overs for unseen characters, which could be annoying if misjudged, is well done too. 

Finally, the three women assembled to bring Anomaly to life are just brilliant and all deserve to go on to exceptionally good things. Alice Handoll has the most fun part (well, after a fashion) as troubled Polly and delivers impish charm that makes her eventual Big Reveals (no spoilers) and dramatic change in tone all the more arresting. Natasha Cowley as Daddy's business heir apparent Piper gives us the perfect balance of steel and heartbreak, her commitment to her family and sacrifices for her/their career totally relatable. Katherine Samuelson rounds out the trio as Penny, the actress with shades of Kardashian, and makes her character more sympathetic, complex and strong than that summation could ever suggest. They're a hell of a team, these three. Squad goals.

Anomaly is a really exciting play. For all that it's hard to watch and challenging to process, it is immensely rewarding and a great hour of theatre all round. It's also an amazing showcase of young, female talent doing stuff on their own terms. And I think we can all agree that's A Good Thing.

Anomaly is at The Old Red Lion Theatre (WHICH HAS A RESIDENT DOG and how did I not know this?) until 2nd February.

My ticket for Anomaly was kindly provided by the production. An unreserved seat would normally cost £17. 

Theatre Review: War Horse

Somehow, despite the fact it's been around for about a billion years, it's taken me until 2019 to finally see War Horse on stage. Weird right? It's done the National Theatre, it's done the West End, it's done Broadway, it's done countless other countries around the world and tours around the UK but I've always missed it. 

In the time that I've been busily not seeing it, the show has become iconic. The book on which it's based has been made into a Hollywood blockbuster (which I did see). Everyone knows roughly what the Joey puppet looks like. He's probably one of the British stage's most instantly recognisable stars. 

All of which made me head into the Lyttleton theatre at the NT, to see one of the last London performances before Joey hopped in his horse box to head back out on tour, with a general expectation that I would enjoy the show, and be amazed by the puppets, but otherwise not be blown away by it. I was wrong on that count: I was completely blown away by it. Nothing had prepared me for how powerful this show is.

What makes blogging about War Horse a bit weird, though, is that I imagine most of you reading this already know every single reason why I was blown away by it. Because unlike me you probably didn't wait since the show's premiere in the Jurassic age to see it. I'm not sure, at this stage, what there is left to say about why War Horse is the phenomenon that it rightly is. 

But I do want to say something, however brief and repetitive it may be. Deal with it.

Mercifully for you lot, there are only three points I really want to make. The first is that Michael Morpurgo's brilliant book provides one of  the most poignant, arresting and humane stories told in any medium, ever. But it works particularly well in the theatre, I think, because it allows the audience to fill in so much with their own imaginations. The bigger dramatic sweep that theatre allows for fits it very well. Also, it's just a bloody good story and a completely unique way of telling a very well told one (that of the First World War).Through taking the human perspective away and making Joey the horse the centre of everything, it instantly removes all human notions of what that war was about allowing the stupidity and brutality of the way it was fought to come to the fore. This makes it even more touching. By which I mean you will cry. And, if you're me, you will cry - and I do mean cry; ugly, shoulder heaving cry - for approximately 80% of the show. I'm not sure I trust anyone who can sit through this show and not cry to be honest. Like, are you dead inside or what?

The second point I want to make is the one that needs making least of all, which is that the puppetry, courtesy of the Handspring Puppet Company, in War Horse is literally insane. It's no wonder Joey has become such an icon - it's utterly unbelievable how much of a 'real' horse he is. You forget more or less instantly that he is in fact three men in a frame, he is so lifelike (another thing that makes the story all the more face moistening). It's the detail that does it; the way he can flick his ears and rustle his tail. Shout out also to the goose puppet, who provides some much needed light relief with his implausibly credible and sassy antics.

Finally, this production is just absolute genius. Marianne Elliott was the original director - how much do I love that woman - and what she has devised is brilliant. Much of the credit belongs to designer Rae Smith whose sparse, beautiful set and innovative use of stage dressing give sthe show a thrilling immediacy. The sum total is a production that feels real and immersive: you utterly believe not only that those three men in a frame are a horse but that those two spirally strands of wire are no man's land. Some of the scenes terrified me to the point of barely being able to watch them (this is a family show and I am 32 years old). The two cavalry charges and, especially, the bit where Joey is trapped in the barbed wire will never leave my memory. They are phenomenally technically accomplished, brilliant storytelling and also Original Watership Down levels of traumatising. 

Even if it's taken me far too long, I'm so glad I finally managed to see War Horse. It's precisely as good as everyone says it is, if not better, and the best possible way to have started my theatrical 2019. 

War Horse has now completed the run at the National Theatre that I saw, but the production is back on tour and you can find details at www.warhorseonstage.com

I saw War Horse at the NT and sat in D19 in the circle, which cost £45 (more than I would usually spend, but the trip was my Christmas present to my parents and, regardless, was worth every penny).