Review by Simon Jenner, July 18 2026
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
There might have been national wishes for another homecoming by July, but of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 novel War Horse – dramatised by Nick Stafford and initially directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris – there can be no doubt. It returns to the National Theatre Olivier till July 30, its revival directed by Katie Henry (who also directed the 2018 revival), with Tom Morris returning to direct the South African Handspring Puppet Company’s two horses and an escaping goose. As spectacle, direction and much of the story it overwhelms; though is it heresy to say it can slightly underwhelm too? It still sounds it to say so.
Since its 2007 Olivier debut, War Horse has played to over 8.8 million people worldwide, won “more than 25 major awards” (why can’t they be specific?) including two Oliviers for choreography and set design, though it had to await a Tony for Best Play; was turned into a 2011 film by Steven Spielberg, and become the National Theatre’s principal bulwark against all the downturns and cuts the arts have suffered since. So still the most successful in the National’s history. It stamps as it were, Nicholas Hytner’s tenure along with his innovation of NT Live and subsequent development.
Photo Credit: Brinkhoff/Moegenburg.
Tom Sturgess always compels attention as the farm boy who falls for Joey the racehorse his improvident father Ted (Stephen Beckett also brutish Colonel Strauss) buys; goaded at auction by rival and cousin Arthur (Nicholas Khan, also cheery Private Brandt) into securing a thoroughbred, Joey, for 39 guineas.
It should be mentioned that the 2026 version of the drama has reverted to the original cousin rivalry. Arthur and ill-fated son Billy (Corey Montague-Sholey, also Sergeant Klebb and Shaw) are Narracotts, not the Warrens of 2007 (in itself an earlier conflation from the book). This part of the drama compels, where Sturgess and the Joey puppeteers have the audience eating out of their hands as much as Joey does with Albert. The puppeteers are listed below.
As do the subsequent tensions. Jo Castleton’s Rose Narracott attempts peace but rivalries and bets mean that after Albert’s nurturing (beautifully realised, over quite a stretch) Joey’s pulling a plough across the ground is a climax to the first part. Here Damian Lynch as Charles Carter first impresses with an auctioneer’s barking voice that means it’s no surprise he reappears as Sergeant Thunder after the war starts.
To enhance Joey’s narrative importance, War Horse extends sequences like the first encounter with Albert, and the ploughing contest. Sturgess and the puppeteers dominate as they have to, though this and the wartime spectacle shrinks the human scale. That’s partly the point, though it means everyone else is sketched in star-shells.
Chris Williams semaphores the decency and sensitivity of Captain Nicholls (his main role) who takes Joey to war, and Daniel Rock as his (here more truculent) companion Captain Stewart. There’s fine work from Manuel Klein as the sympathetic German Captain Friedrich Muller, his main role, and Anita Adam Gabay as the French girl Emilie, who’s also a puppeteer with Joey as a foal. At least these roles hum with some of Mortpurgo’s original life.
Intriguingly Madeleine Leslay’s Paulette as Emilie’s mother is Stafford’s invention and given some oxygen, as well as Leslay’s Sarah Carter pre-war.
Danny Hendrix has more to do with the jocular Joey-rescuer Roberts than as Veterinary Officer Martin, one of those characters cut down to nothing. Ike Bennett briefly shines as Albert’s friend David Taylor. You can’t help thinking that a few minutes less of spectacle and about ten more on the overall time of two hours 40 would have rounded this iteration of War Horse into something far richer. Less of a gallop through the human and more a canter.
Anita Adam Gabay as Emilie. Photo Credit: Brinkhoff/Moegenburg.
Adrian Kohler now takes on fabrication for Handspring, with Rae Smith providing drawings for the backdrops, which adorn his design of a sheared-off white aperture where the drawings appear (amplified by 59 Studio), sometimes gilt at edges by sunrise; all lit by Rob Casey. The greatest feature after the horses and memorable goose is the tank, lurching menacingly across the stage. That stage is naturally swept clean for props and actors as well as chorus to populate it; where overall choreographic director Tony Sedgwick is complemented by puppetry director Matthew Forbes.
Adrian Sutton’s evocative music consciously takes on flavours of Holst’s Planets, particularly ‘Mars’ and ‘Venus’, and becomes a continuity character, buttressed by Christopher Shutt’s exceptional war-sounds and John Tams songmaking: delivered often from near an aisle or stage edge by Sally Swanson.
With several subsequent puppet-inhabiting plays like My Neighbour Totoro and Life of Pi garnering awards, War Horse stands as the first major British statement of puppeteering for adults. If you discount Handspring not being British. An initiative led in the 1980s by the late Maurice Stewart (someone I knew well) against a resistant Arts Council, it took incremental victories and concessions over 20 years. But there’s still no Olivier you’ll note for puppetry (the Oliver went to “choreography” which had to do). Which still makes sense when there’s about one production a year to nominate. Still progress then.
Other roles are taken by Owen Dagnall as alternate Albert and the wisecracking Geordie in No-Man’s Land, cheering on Roberts as he advances with a white flag; Jasmin Hinds as Matron Callaghan (neatly transformed from the original Major) with the injured Albert, alongside Lucy Thorburn’s filament of kindness in Nurse Annie Gilbert; Jack Lord’s kindly clearing station Sergeant Martin Allan, Linford Johnson as shrewd Sergeant Fine at the veterinary station, Anne-Marie Piazza’s Nell Allen and Private Schnabel is also singing captain and cover singer; and there’s Simon Stanhope’s brief sensitive Manfred. They swell the chorus of civilians bustling in marketplaces and soldiers in squalid trenches. Their “We’re only remembered for what we’ve done” sung at intervals throughout, is mournful, but dignified elegy.
Re-reading the book, Stafford’s script and seeing other choices made (by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis) increases respect for much of Stafford’s; though regrets too. Above all though Stafford’s version does clear the ground for Albert and Joey. And here the twelve rotating members of the Handspring Company in particular, the cast, Smith’s set, Sedgwick’s choreography, Sutton’s and Tam’s music and Casey’s lighting produce an astonishing spectacle that still moves and will forever craze the idiocy of war on the retina like an iced-over No-Man’s Land.
The Horses
Joe as a Foal: Anita Adam Gabay, Eloise Beaumont-Wood, Jordan Paris.
Joey/Topthorn Head: Rianna Ash, Matthew Lawrence, Alexandra Donnachie, Wade Lewin, Rafe Young, Chris Milford, Lewis McBean, Niko Wirachman
Joe/Topthorn Hind/Goose: Andrew Key, Michael Larcombe, Felicity Donnelly, Sam Goodchild
Music Director Dom Coyote, Casting Director Jill Green CDG, Fight Director Paul Benzing, Wellbeing Consultant Patricia Ojehonmon, Dialect Coach Rebecca Daltry, Voice Coaches Cathleen McCarron and Shereen Ibrahim
Associate Director Anna Marshall, Associate Set Designer William Fricker, Associate Costume Designer Johanna Coe, Associate Lighting Designer Tom Turner, Associate Puppetry Designer Lewis Howard Music Associate Matthew Gough, Associate Sound Designers Rob Bettle for Sound Quiet Time and Emma Laxton, Casting Associates Oliva Laydon and Tom Shields, Staff Director Jasmine Teo, Assistant Puppetry Designer Director Ashleigh Cheadle.
Producer Adowa-Alexsis Minth and Kimberley Thomas, Production Manager Ben Arkell, Stage Manager Ashley J Mochan, DSM Aislinn Jackson, ASMs Ian Connopp and Jacob Martin, DSM Cover Frances O’Donnell, ASM Cover Wen-Hsin Chiang, Head Puppet Technician Monica Corder, Puppet Technician Devonne Shappard.
Deputy Production Manager Andrew Pellett, Original Wellbeing Consultant Samantha Adams, Puppetry and Movement Captain Rhianna Ash, Fight Captain Jordan Parish, Song Captain Anne-Marie Piazza, Voice Captain Chris Williams
Project Draughting Gemma Grosvenor, Digital Art Daniel Radley-Bennett, Costume Supervisor Sarah Holmes, Assistant Costume Supervisor Aimee Darby and Aurora Street, Wig, Hair & Make-Up Supervisor Philip Carson-Sheard, Running Wardrobe Supervisor Jules Burns McKenzie, Props Supervisor Chris Lake.
Photo Credit: Brinkhoff/Moegenburg.