At the outbreak of the First World War, young Albert’s beloved horse Joey is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. Too young to enlist, Albert refuses to forget him, embarking on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of wartime France – determined to bring Joey home.
Originally Morpurgo thought "they must be mad" to try to make a play from his best-selling 1982 novel; but the play was a great success. The play's West End and Broadway productions are directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris; it features life-size horse puppets by the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa, the movements of which were choreographed by Toby Sedgwick.