Hot Trot: 'War Horse' on the home straight

War Horse, the award-winning play produced by South Africans Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, has finally come home.

''Local audiences will be getting the benefit of our seven years on the road", Kohler says about the show, created for the National Theatre in London. It is based on writer Michael Morpurgo's story about horses sent to the battlefields during World War 1.

The Handspring Puppet Company has so far made 86 life-size horses for productions around the world, including a long Broadway run in New York.

The cane-and stretched-georgette horses, with puppeteers clearly visible inside the transparent bodies, have the remarkable ability to suspend the disbelief of audiences. They seem so real that schoolchildren attending a press conference in Johannesburg this week rushed back when the horse on display reared up. The horse snorts, neighs and nuzzles, its ears and tail twitch. Its sparkling eyes make you believe it has a brain.

''So far 5million people have seen the show. It's been the most successful production the National Theatre has ever mounted," says Jones.

''People have been asking us to bring it home for years," adds Kohler. ''But it is a very expensive show, and finding the right funding has been difficult. On the West End people pay £80 [about R1440] a ticket."

It will be worth the wait, Kohler says, admitting that even he is surprised by the ability of the production to elicit emotion.

''Though I designed them, even I start to believe the horses are real when the puppeteers manipulate them. The level of expertise is amazing. I've seen movements in the latest show I've never seen before, that I didn't know the puppets were capable of."

According to the cast, the audience goes through a highly emotive journey. They are amazed, they laugh, they cry.

''We've discovered people aren't aware of their feelings for animals. They don't articulate them to themselves, so the emotion comes as a surprise to them," says Kohler.

• 'War Horse' runs at The Teatro at Montecasino in Johannesburg from October 22 to November 30 and at the Artscape Opera House in Cape Town from December 5 to January 4. Tickets cost from R100 to R450 at Computicket or 0861-915-8000