My kingdom for this horse: Queen is entranced by Joey again

 
Pa22 October 2013

The Queen visited the National Theatre today as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, where she was greeted by the Warhorse star Joey. "It's lovely to see you again," she told him.

The monarch has seen the hugely successful play, which is based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo and tells the story of Joey, a horse who serves in the First World War.

During the Diamond Jubilee River Thames pageant last summer the Queen appeared to enjoy watching the mechanical animal running across the roof of the National Theatre, which first staged the play, as the royal barge sailed past.

Gareth Aled, the horse puppeteer, said after meeting the Queen, who saw the production in 2009,  that Joey had also travelled to the Windsor Castle to visit the monarch.

He added: "She's familiar with horses and with Joey, it's a very lovely privilege to have that meeting, she knows horses probably better than we do."

Joey walked up to the Queen and followed her as she walked to her waiting state limousine before rearing up on his hind legs as the car departed.

The National Theatre opened its doors in 1963 with the Hollywood star Sir Laurence Olivier as its first director and over the decades has staged 800 productions.

It has premiered plays by world leading playwrights like Sir Tom Stoppard, Sir Peter Shaffer, Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, Alan Bennett and Sir David Hare, and been the home to outstanding revivals of classic plays and musicals.

The famous theatre moved to its South Bank home in 1976 and is marking half a century of entertaining the nation with a gala performance next month featuring scenes from memorable productions.

Among the highlights are Dame Judi Dench, who appeared in Antony and Cleopatra in 1987, reprising the lead female role and delivering her elegy to Antony, while Sir Michael Gambon and Sir Derek Jacobi are expected to play parts in Pinter's No Man's Land.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in