But would love to. Mrs toro, however, is adamant that we won't go, purely because she knows she would cry all the way through. As, to be fair, would I.

I've threatened her with a copy of the film on DVD for next Xmas, which didn't go down too well either.

Initially I thought I'd never cope with people operating puppets. But by the end I was believing the horse was real and shedding the odd tear. The puppetry is truly masterful. It was marvellous, so well done.

I worry the film wont' be nearly as good.

I took my Grandmother a few weeks back. Not only was the staging fantastic, but its evocation of the battle fields of WW1 was extremely well done. Given that my Grandmother's father was caught in (and ultimately - years later - killed by) a mustard gas attack in that war, this added a further poignancy to an already moving tale.

It's the emotional nature of the story that worries me about Spielberg's adaptation. While I think he's a wonderful director, he's not known for subtlety and War Horse could easily end up as a series of Big Speilbergy Emotional Moments. Where the stage production succeeds is in avoiding too much emotional manipulation - it's tear-jerking sure enough, but in a stoic and subtle way.

And as for the horses - they are a joy to watch and convey so much whilst being little more than wire frames. I say see it if you can (but don't expect cheap tickets...)

a while ago. We went to the final dress rehearsal (IIRC), so the stage production had a few rough edges, but it was a truly remarkable event, and the first appearance of Joey the horse was something I will remember for a good long while. My wife was a horse rider, and we still own her horse, so she knows horses well, and so far as she was concerned, it was horses on stage, not chaps carrying frameworks around. But, and this is going to be the problem with the film, it was still a stylised version of the Great War, and worked well on stage. The film will be a more realistic version, and I worry that Spielberg's sentimentality will be too overt. I'm not sure if I want to sse the film, having seen the stage play, but I urge anyone who hasn't seen it in the theatre to make every effort to do so.