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New York’s blubbing bloggers fall for this horsey transfer from the National Theatre, but critics find some strings attached So if a theatre critic walked into a Broadway bar, and the barman asked: “Why the long face?”, it would be fair to assume that said pint-puller was not a man of culture. Long faces are very much in vogue on Broadway right now. Pop down to the Lincoln Center on West 65th, for instance, and it seems you’ll find little else. There are several long faces on stage, and hundreds more in the audience. All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that War Horse (the puppet-filled play that’s wowed London audiences since 2007) transferred to Broadway last week, and is making New Yorkers weep like there’s some sort of highly contagious tear-duct infection doing the rounds on the Upper West Side. And don’t just take my word for it. Here’s the horse’s mouth: “I wept silently yet uncontrollably,” writes blogger Lisa Lindblad . “I am not capable of emotional distance in the face of an animal’s pain nor an animal’s love. I was distraught. And, so, I made it through until intermission and then left. Reluctantly, sadly, but self-protectively.” Very wise, Lisa. Indeed, other audience members should probably have followed your lead. “At one point,” reports Melissa Whitworth in the Telegraph , “an elderly woman was so overcome that she fainted and had to be carried out by three audience members and attended to by paramedics in the lobby.” Golly. It seems Stateside audiences have fallen for the story of Albert (the Devon farmboy who goes searching for his beloved dobbin, Joey, on the battlefields of the first world war) every bit as fervently as we Brits – and none more so than Alan Miller, who blogs at A Seat on the Aisle . “[War Horse] is a story of honour and deceit, of man’s humanity and inhumanity to his fellow man, of children and adults, of mothers, fathers and sons, of envy and petty rivalries, of bravery and cowardice, of the horror and futility of war – in sum, of everything that makes man what he is, for better or for worse,” wrote Miller. Before disappearing into an oxygen tank for several days. But what about the critics? Well, they adore the life-like puppets, that’s for sure. “They are simply extraordinary creations,” says Chris Jones at the Chicago Tribune , who especially loves the way they “seem to pulse in the very air – breathing, churning and always teaching us, or maybe just reminding us, that the world never stands still and that all you can do is find your love and not get mowed down by the big guns”. What Chris said, says the New York Daily News’s Jerry Dziemianowicz , in slightly less purplish words. “The work by puppet designers Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler is exquisite,” Dziemianowicz writes. “They bring Joey and Topthorn, a fellow war horse, and other animals so authentically to life you believe you’re seeing the real deal.” But according to New York Magazine’s Scott Brown , it’s the brilliance of the puppetry that highlights the show’s flaws. “This horse is alert and alive,” says Brown of Joey. “[S]o much so, we realise only slowly that the script he’s dragging is neither.” Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal was even less impressed. “The fundamental flaw of War Horse,” writes Teachout, “is that Nick Stafford, who wrote the script ‘in association ‘… with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company, has taken a book that was written for children [by Michael Morpurgo] and tried to give it the expressive weight of a play for adults.” Not surprisingly, Teachout concludes, “Morpurgo’s plot can’t stand the strain.” As a result, argues the New York Times’s Ben Brantley , the acting is affected. “The characters are drawn in the broad strokes you associate with children’s literature,” writes Brantley. Brown concurs: “The more horselike the puppet became, the more puppetlike I found the human actors.” The thing that most jarred with our critics was the play’s – ***SPOILER ALERT*** – ending. Much of War House is explicitly critical of the horrors of conflict, but, says Bloomberg’s Jeremy Gerard , its finish blunts any pacifist message. “The climax, which is overwrought and even a bit silly, never is in doubt,” says Gerard, “ultimately robbing the play of deeper emotional involvement.” Perhaps. But try telling that to Lisa Lindblad, who never even saw it. Do say: I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. Don’t say: Like flogging a dead horse. The reviews reviewed: Puppets great. Ending sad. Broadway Theatre Patrick Kingsley guardian.co.uk