War Horse was more marvellous than I expected.

Bear in mind that it's a children's story adapted for the stage. So my direst predictions of gloom as the story started unfolding didn't quite come to pass. But caveating my reaction with this suggests I'm belittling it. Which I'm not.

You're almost best not to look at the link above. If you're going to go and see it. As the puppetry is out and out miraculous. Charmingly observed. Ingeniously engineered. The reviews all bleat on about how you don't notice the puppeteers. But you don't.

The goose almost stole the show. Although my heart was captured by the foal. I hardly cared about the adult horse when he stramped onto the stage.

Anyway, eulogy to the puppetry aside, this is a cracking show. A lovely story engagingly told. Brilliantly acted - with only one guy that cousin Alice and I weren't quite sure about. I thought he might be a last minute stand in as his German accent wasn't quite what it might have been. But then he was Irish. Brilliant visual effects. They made very nice use of a raggedy tear in the back cloth thing. And lovely folky music interwoven throughout.

Children in tow or not, go see. And you're in luck as they've just released 300,000 more tickets til October next year. Nice to see the National having such a storming success. They must have taken tips from Antigone...