War Horse - A Travesty (Like a Tragedy, but Worse).

Friends, I have gone from the best play to grace the stage to the absolute, undisputed, holy-crap-did-I-really-just-sit-through-that-trash-?, worst play imagineable. I'll do you a favor and review War Horse in two words: unadulterated suckage. It was so bad I don't even think I should italicize the title again.

Synopsis: War Horse is a play about a young man whose drunk father buys a horse with the mortgage money. Young man trains and falls in love with horse, father sells it to the army without telling son, son runs away and joins army to go find horse. People die.

Don't get me wrong, the horses themselves were fantastic. They're made of steel and leather and have two people inside of them and one moving the head parts. The ears flick, the tail swishes, and the legs can kick forward and backward. There is nothing wrong with the horses (at least the two main horses). There was also a man controlling a goose. The goose should have won a freaking oscar. Once the play was over I didn't clap (I know...burn, right?) until the goose and goose man came out, then I stood up and applauded, then sat down and rested my hands till the house lights came on and I could leave.

Here are some random thoughts I had:

• I have taken dumps more entertaining than War Horse.


• If Daniel Cooper (our resident 4-year-old) wrote a play right now and he and I staged it in a garage with nothing but Cabbage Patch Kid dolls and dental floss, it would have been better.


• To simulate the script, load every cliche imagineable (together forever, sibling rivalry, animal cruelty is bad, generations learning through war, etc, etc, etc) into a shotgun, shoot it through a bad romance novel, and glue the pieces into random pages ripped from Black Beauty.


• The German guy had a French accent.


• REALLY should have added a girl, or at least made the horse a girl. The boy's love for his horse went a little too far for me, if you know what I mean.


• Instead of sounding like a horse, the people inside just screamed falsetto or made vomiting sounds, depending on if the horse was being shot or struggling for breath.

Things I would rather have done than watch this play:

Shave my eyebrows

Kiss a man

Eat dog food with glass in it

Get married

I think you get the point. Save your money, your IQ, and your posterity. Do anything and everything to avoid this play. Think of the children.

Huzzah.