Farm Boy, currently visiting from London as part of Brits Off Broadway, is being billed as a sequel to War Horse, which pranced its way to a Tony for best new play in 2011 and is still a hot ticket at Lincoln Center. Both are based on novels by British writer Michael Morpurgo, whose program notes for Farm Boy point out that this isn’t a conventional sequel, picking up right where War Horse leaves off. Instead, we meet the great-grandson of Albert, the young hero of War Horse whose story is a vivid reminder of how love for an animal can bring out the best in humans—fierce love, bravery, optimism, tenderness—even amid that most inhuman of pursuits, a world war.
Theatergoers familiar with 59E59, where Farm Boy is playing, will know not to expect anything on the epic scale of War Horse, with its magnificent life-size horse puppets and cast of dozens. Adapted for the stage and also directed by Daniel Buckroyd (War Horse was adapted by Nick Stafford and the Handspring Puppet Company), “Farm Boy” is intimate and folksy in both subject matter and approach. Much of it is spoken directly to the audience in a “let me tell you a story” narrative style. The two characters are billed simply as “Grandson” (Richard Pryal) and “Grandfather” (John Walters)—the son of War Horse’s Albert. While “War Horse” is inevitably about the power of two huge forces—history-making world events and love—to affect the course of people’s lives on a grand scale, Farm Boy is about the much quieter but no less powerful force of family history. These stories don’t just affect us, in many ways they are us.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Joey, the Bay hunter horse who along with his boy owner is a star of “War Horse,” thanks to the puppeteers who give him such remarkable life, is long retired and has been replaced in “Farm Boy” by a tractor. It’s all but inevitable that the tractor has ascended the ranks on the farm, thanks to its ability to till the land in the Devon countryside that is Morpurgo’s real-life and fictional stomping ground. What is more surprising is that it has captured the heart of the grandson, a city boy by birth if not heritage or inclination. For him, his grandfather’s old tractor represents a romance with country life that he’s been nurturing since boyhood. “Up there on my tractor, I was a farmer, like my Grandpa,” he says near the top of the play. He remembers how as a boy he’d be in the driver’s seat for hours, plowing, tilling, going wherever he wanted if only in his imagination, since the old tractor didn’t actually work anymore.
It should be said that we can see how this tractor would be easy to love. The third way in which it has replaced Joey the horse is as the defining visual element of this production, taking up most of the stage. While it never gets to do anything like its equivalent of galloping, it is about as lovely as a tractor could be, thanks to Tim Brierley, who constructed it, and Susan Winters, who is credited with its rustic paint job, including wheel spokes in a cheerful red. It may be the first and only tractor with its own scenic design team.
As with the earlier story, a bet figures prominently (apparently it’s a popular pastime in Devon). In this case it’s on whether Joey and Zoey, the mare who becomes Joey’s equine companion back on the farm after the war, can out-plow the Fordson tractor owned by a more well-to-do farming family in the town. It’s a credit to both the actors and the adaptation that the storytelling flows naturally, as if a particularly lively grandfather and grandson were really sitting around happily reminiscing. The story about the bet is one of the most vivid, and we can see the valiant but fading horses and the determined little tractor, conjured out of the performers’ imaginations.
Under the direction of Buckroyd, the actors do a nice job of transporting us through voice and body to the scenes of the stories they recount. When they speak of Albert raising Joey, they slowly turn as if watching horse and rider streaming across the countryside together. When Joey and Albert return home safely from their tour in France during the First World War, welcomed by banners and bunting and flags waving, the grandfather and grandson in this play dance a little jig. This is especially important in this production, because there aren’t a lot of changes in tone to break up things up otherwise. Matt Marks’ music is pleasing, if prone to tug overtly on our heartstrings, and along with Mark Dymock’s lighting design, it darkens appropriately—though very momentarily—when we first talk about World War I.
Otherwise, it’s up to the actors to sustain our interest, and while an early speech from the grandfather about swallows’ eggs lost me for a moment, mostly they do. Richard Pryal’s grandson is a bright-eyed romantic enthusiast. Anyone who has seen War Horse will recognize in this young man the protagonist of the earlier story, whose capacity for love all but gives him wings. John Walters as the grandfather seems to twinkle even in his crustier moments. The vulnerability he shows in asking for his grandson’s help, and later, the grandson’s reaction in receiving the fruits of that favor—are the play’s most affecting moments.
This exchange is the present-tense part of Farm Boy, which makes a nice parable about how the young—rather than just receptacles to be filled with the accumulated stories and wisdom of their elders—have gifts to give as well. It’s also the play’s only hint of an obstacle that needs to be overcome. If all families got on as well as this pair, what a happy world it would be. Both “Farm Boy” and its predecessor are heavy on sentiment, but the first story involves a war and its uncountable horrors. The sequel lacks anything like that level of dramatic tension, but that’s not really the intent here. If you fins yourself missing Joey and Albert and long for a more intimate look at their life on the farm, this tale of their spiritual as well as literal offspring is a pleasing journey to that world. Sometimes a warmhearted story with a happy ending—or several, in this case—are all you need from a trip to the theater.
FARM BOY begins performances on Wednesday, December 7 for a limited engagement through Sunday, January 1. The performance schedule is Tuesday – Thursday at 7:15 PM; Friday at 8:15 PM; Saturday at 2:15 PM & 8:15 PM; Sunday at 3:15 PM & 7:15 PM. Tickets are $35 ($24.50 for 59E59 Members). To purchase tickets, call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or go to www.59e59.org.
Please note the following Holiday schedule from December 20 – January 1: Tue, Wed & Thu 7:15, Fri 8:15, Sat 2:15 & 7:15, Sun 3:15. There is an additional performance on Thursday, December 29 at 2:15.
Olivia Jane Smith is a writer, editor, and lifelong theater lover (her parents borrowed her name from "Twelfth Night"). She has written about theater for the New York Daily News, Backstage, and the Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow Olivia at ojanesmith.tumblr.com
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