Features

War Horse author in Remembrance Sunday tribute

Michael Morpurgo performs excerpts from War Horse in a unique reading at Birmingham Hippodrome in honour of Remembrance Sunday.

Editorial Staff
In the run up to Remembrance Sunday, Michael Morpurgo delighted the Birmingham Hippodrome with a special concert style reading of his book War Horse. He was accompanied by John Tams and Barry Coope performing the haunting music from the stage show.

Without actors and other distractions on stage the words and characters from the book come alive giving every member of the audience a chance to imagine the scene. The extra passion poured into the words by their creator combined with the music brought the emotion of the story to the fore, leaving many with a tear in their eye.

Joey outside Birmingham Hippodrome
Joey outside Birmingham Hippodrome
© Kieran Johnson

Talking about the event Michael Morpurgo said “War Horse the book was inspired by a fireside chat in a Devon pub, over 30 years ago, with a veteran of the First World War. It has since been a National Theatre play, and a symphony concert piece, a radio play, and a Spielberg movie. But this concert version adapted by John Tams (the song-maker of the NT production,) is the closest of all the adaptations to the original book, in which the voice of the storyteller is the voice of Joey, the horse on a Devon farm, sold away to the army to go to the front in 1914. And it’s the version in which, as the reader of the story on stage, I am most involved. Every time I read it, with John and Barry’s glorious music interwoven with the words, I feel as if I’m telling it for the first time, as if I was there , as the old soldier in the pub was all those years ago.”

To hold the attention for a continuous 90 minutes of an audience with such a wide age range, takes something special. This event certainly fitted that description, with the standing ovation at the end a testament to that.

– Annette Nuttall