Farm Boy

The theatrical adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel “War Horse” employs maximalist stagecraft, including dazzling puppetry, in the service of emotionally expansive storytelling. “Farm Boy,” the two-man, one-tractor play based on Mr. Morpurgo’s quasi sequel, is its minimalist opposite, a gentle tale of connection across generations, recounted with old-fashioned earnest simplicity. Part of the Brits Off Broadway season running at 59E59 Theaters, the production, adapted and directed by Daniel Buckroyd, comes from New Perspectives Theater Company, the largest provider of touring theater to the rural East Midlands in England. The play’s elegiac view of pastoral life and vanished agricultural traditions seems ideally tailored to foster a sense of history and cultural identity in young audiences. For those less inclined toward rustic nostalgia packaged as sweetly medicinal children’s theater, “Farm Boy” requires a willingness to be charmed by a folksy geezer laying on a thick West Country accent and saying, “I remember that like it were yesterday an’ all.” That lifelong Devon farmer (played by John Walters) is the son of Albert, the teenage protagonist of “War Horse,” whose brave quest to find his beloved stallion, Joey, in World War I France is efficiently recapped here. (The stage production based on “War Horse” is currently at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center; the Steven Spielberg film version is scheduled to open on Christmas.) The only other character physically present onstage in “Farm Boy” is Albert’s college-age great-grandson (Richard Pryal). The lad’s fondness for his grandpa has hatched in him an appreciation for farm life that bypassed his citified dad. Running a fleet 65 minutes and underscored by Matt Marks’s evocative music, the play explores the bond between grandfather and grandson. The loquacious old man opens up about his past, sharing the sorrow of losing his wife and the regret that she was unable to finish teaching him to read and write. That revelation generates a wager, which in turn yields a tale of how the family came into possession of the rusted tractor standing center stage, a story that reaches back to capture a moment of glory from the latter years of Albert and Joey. It’s all very quaint and disarmingly sincere, but I did miss those puppets.

Very evocative, very natural and very believable performance of a gentle story.