Here’s something new to ban. Writers who use the Great War as an emotional backdrop to their stories. It’s embarrassing to see so many authors marching up the alley marked ‘failure of invention’. And it dishonours the dead to use their blood as wallpaper. Sadly the subject is just too tempting. It’s our equivalent of the Oedipus myth. Jocasta is the war. Oedipus is the eager recruit. Their union leads to mutilation, chaos, death and a wave of blood-guilt spreading down the generations. Michael Morpurgo’s novel War Horse focuses on the millions of animals who died in the trenches and the NT has put the book on the stage to coincide with the Christmas shopping season. Nice day out. Death and horror followed by éclairs and new dresses.
The show’s big selling point is the technical achievement of the Handspring Puppet Company.
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