Ashbourne College trip to see War Horse

On Wednesday the 7th of October, a small group of Ashbourne students travelled to the buzzing centre of Holborn to watch the hit theatre production of War Horse, performed by the National Theatre at the New London Theatre in Drury Lane. They were accompanied by Ben, Maths Teacher extraordinare and big theatre fan, and Steph, the Activities Coordinator who cried throughout the entire film adaptation and had no idea why she was about to put herself through the same ordeal in live action.

The seats procured were excellent – right in front of the stage, but at eye level with the performance. Everyone was briefly delighted to discover that we seemed to have an inordinate amount of legroom, but we were then informed by the usher that this area would also be used by the actors, and that we had to be careful not to trip them up! It certainly made for an interesting few moments when they would suddenly appear out of the shadows, and everyone had to recoil at lightspeed into their chairs to avoid disrupting the performance in the most embarrassing way possible, but meant that overall we felt far more involved in the story.
The performance itself was of course incredible - The Times didn’t dub it “the theatrical event of the decade” for nothing! Everyone agreed that throughout the whole performance they kept forgetting that Joey was in fact a puppet, and not a real horse. Tears were definitely shed, but with equal amounts of laughter. All in all, the trip was a great success, so here’s to many more!