Warhorse -- definitely NOT what I expected!

A few years back, my gammy and I decided to buy season tickets to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, so we have seen quite a few musicals and other productions over the last couple years.  The performances are always excellent, they are national touring productions after all, but few have been presented as well as Warhorse was tonight.

Going into this I was wary.  I had not seen the movie, nor had I read much about it.  All I knew was that it was about a horse.  In a war.  I knew a lot, didn't I?

Well, I want to see the movie now because OH MY GOODNESS this thing was amazing!  By the end of the first act, I was in tears.

A brief synopsis: The show starts out with an auction for a horse, two brothers that hate each other bidding each other up for this horse.  Albert is excited when his dad wins the horse in the auction and the two (the horse and Albert) quickly bond.  That bond is absolutely incredible and is truly what drives the entire story.  The dad ultimately ends up selling the horse, Joey, to the military so that he can be an officer's horse.  Albert is so distraught over this, he eventually lies about his age so he can be in the military so that he can try and find Joey... Their search for and devotion to each other is absolutely beautiful.

Joey, the title character. An amazing feat in crafting.

This seems like it is an impossible story to tell on stage.  How can you train a horse to be able to do this every night?  Exactly, it is not going to happen.  So, the stage workers have developed a puppet to play the part.  And no, before you go thinking this is something coming out of a kid's toy box or what you might see in a Disneyland parade, think again.  These creations were incredible and so lifelike.  Their movements were so natural and the three people that were guiding this creature just blended in and became apart of it, not acting as a distraction to the rest of the display on stage.  The way they were able to create this horse, and all the other animals in the play, allowed this to be an absolutely incredible production visually.

Due to the ever changing setting of this play, they kept the backdrop simple, relying more on the integration of visual media to help set the scene.  A basic black background, with a beige strip at the top was the backing of the entire show.  However, what they did with that beige strip was absolutely brilliant.  They used line drawings that would change to show ships sailing, a mass of soldiers and horses crossing a battlefield, a sky changing.  In addition to that, they would display the date, like a journal entry, to allow you to know at what point in the story it was, since the play takes place over the course of seven years.

This performance was incredible and the cast truly brought their "A-game."  Each cast member really invited you into the story, so that you couldn't help but be engrossed in the performance.  In other productions I have been to it was easy to say "I really like the actor/actress who played ____________," but in this production, there is no one person that stands out above the rest.  The actors truly became that characters and wanted you to feel their emotion and struggle.

I am just still in utter awe of this production and if anyone has a chance to see it at Segerstrom or any other theater  I highly recommend doing so because you are honestly missing out on an incredible performance if you don't.