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Thursday, May 30, 2013
Arts Theater review: War Horse
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Thu, May 30, 2013 at 5:09 PM
Even as I watched the fabulous Tony Award-winning production of War Horse in New York more than a year ago, the question arose in my mind, partly because the thrust stage at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre seemed so perfect: How well would a show like this fare on the road - at conventional proscenium theaters like the Belk with twice the seating capacity? Well, less than five months after that valiant steed concluded its Broadway run, I had my answer.
With Belk Theater packed to the rafters on opening night, the crowd adored this traveling War Horse. I was a little surprised, I must admit. At the Beaumont, there was a wonderful parity between the space occupied by the action and the crowd surrounding it. Here the grand action appeared relatively diminished.
After all, there are rarely more than two of the magnificent horses onstage at any one time. The Handspring Puppet Company creations continue to deserve all their accolades, but they are hardly a visual stampede. Without that thrust configuration, those two magnificent stallions, Joey and Topthorn, aren't challenged to leap a terrifying mound of barbed wire at the blackout that signals intermission. So that moment is noticeably less heart-stopping.
But in some ways, the tour has powered up to reach out to larger halls. While we lose the rustic intimacy of the opening scenes, until Albert Narracott's beloved horse Joey is deviously sold into the British cavalry by his drunken dad, by miking the actors and potting up the volume of the sound effects, the World War 1 battle scenes sometimes pack more punch than ever. With the audience further distanced from the action, the projections high above the stage by 59 Productions gain in power, and Karen Spahn has beefed up the original Paule Constable lighting when the shelling begins.
My only quibble when I reviewed the Broadway production was their modification of the original National Theatre of Great Britain casting, changing the Song Man into a Song Woman. Well, they've fixed that, presumably to add more muscle to the music for bigger halls.
There is a tangle of antagonisms in the Narracott family, captured every bit as well by the touring company as the Broadway cast. Because Albert's dad Ted is jealous of his more respectable brother Arthur, he outbids him out of spite to buy Joey, and because Albert raises the foal into a magnificent horse, Arthur's son Billy is jealous of his cousin. Meanwhile, Arthur's mom Rose is down on his dad for buying Joey with money that should go for the mortgage - and later because Ted has betrayed his son by selling him.
Standouts in this core group are Alex Morf with his hayseed innocence and pluck as Albert, Angela Reed for her flinty durability as Rose, and Brian Keane with his classic English-gentry pomposity as Arthur. But of course, the richest gratification in this cast for local theatre aficionados is the fact that it's so good and our homegrown Jason Loughlin has such a prominent share in it.
Jason's dad, Terry Loughlin, was a mainstay in the Charlotte theatre scene before the Loaf began publication and won our third Theaterperson of the Year award in 1989. Jason won our Best College/Teen Actor award in 2001 and drifted out of our radar after he appeared in the NC Shakespeare Festival's Twelfth Night in late 2004 up in High Point. Now as Lieutenant James Nicholls, Loughlin is the officer who rides Joey into battle - years after Albert's father outbid Nicholls for the foal. So in that interval between Joey's conscription into the cavalry and the end of Act 1, Loughlin's is the starring role, and he executes it with admirable warmth, steely courage, and quiet nobility.
But that isn't his only role. Like many others in this fine company, he plays multiple people - plus, and this must be so cool, one of the horses. And shouldn't I heap some praise on the triumvirate of actor-handlers who inhabit the Handspring Puppet of Joey, snorting, whinnying, nuzzling, rearing up, prancing, galloping, grazing, feeding, pulling a plow, pulling a wagon, and royally carrying Morf and Loughlin around the stage? Jon Hoche, Adam Cunningham, and Aaron Haskell execute Toby Sedgwick's meticulous horse choreography so naturally that they often seem to disappear amid the magic that they make. You'd swear all three of them had been brought up in a stable.
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