TT: The fine art of tearjerking

Once again, I’m climbing out on a limb and panning–kind of, sort of–what I suspect is going to be the popular favorite of the current Broadway season, Lincoln Center Theater’s transfer of the London production of War Horse. Here’s an excerpt.
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“War Horse” was a big hit in London, and it will be a big hit at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater. It can’t fail, and it shouldn’t. Never again will you see such visually poetic, technically self-assured craftsmanship as is on near-continuous display in this large-cast stage version of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 children’s novel about the adventures of a horse called Joey–played onstage by a life-sized puppet–who is sold to the British cavalry in 1914 and shipped to France, where he is ridden into battle and lost behind enemy lines. Anyone who fails to respond to “War Horse” on the level of pure spectacle simply doesn’t like theater.
Unfortunately, there’s a catch, and it, too, is big: “War Horse” is the most shameless piece of tearjerking to hit Broadway since “The Sound of Music.” If that doesn’t stop you in your tracks, buy your tickets now. Otherwise, read on and be forewarned.
The synopsis of “War Horse” with which this review began is all you need to know about the events of the play, which is a straight-off-the-rack pageant of sibling rivalry, youthful rebellion, crazy courage and folk songs. Since critical etiquette forbids the revelation of surprises, even when they’re not surprising, suffice it to say that what happens thereafter is a cross between “Black Beauty” and “Saving Private Ryan.” Small wonder that Steven Spielberg is turning “War Horse” into a movie–only without the puppetry. That, however, will be like performing “La Bohème” without the music, since the puppetry is the point of the show. All of the animals in “War Horse” are “played” by puppets whose operators are visible to the audience, and it is this deliberate renunciation of conventional theatrical illusion that enables the poetry. You know that Joey and his fellow horses are mechanical dummies, but they are manipulated with such uncanny sensitivity that words like “realism” and “naturalism” quickly fade into irrelevance….
So…what’s not to like? The fundamental flaw of “War Horse” is that Nick Stafford, who wrote the script “in association” (that’s how the credit reads) with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company, has taken a book that was written for children and tried to give it the expressive weight of a play for adults. Not surprisingly, Mr. Morpurgo’s plot can’t stand the strain. Dramatic situations that work perfectly well in the context of the book play like Hollywood clichés onstage….
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Read the whole thing here.