It's been more than 100 years since Ben-Hur was staged in London's West End. That 1902 production, like the film that followed it, was epic. For the famous chariot race, it corralled four teams of horses and had them galloping on giant treadmills on stage. They dragged the chariots, which were on railway tracks, and their hoof-power turned a revolving 35ft panoramic backdrop.
One would have assumed such days of epic theatrical vision and animal action were gone. But this week a German director brings his world premiere of Ben Hur Live to the O2 arena. It sounds positively gladiatorial and worthy of the Colosseum itself. Forty-six choreographed – yes, choreographed – horses, 500 tonnes of special sand, 400 cast and crew who, for authenticity's sake, deliver all the dialogue in Latin and Aramaic (eat your heart out, Mel Gibson) – and a nice role for ex-Police drummer Stewart Copeland to narrate the story and write the music.
With a real chariot race, a circus parade of animals, and dialogue ambitiously delivered with surtitles, it has theatrical spectacular stamped all over it. The promoters have even decided it warrants its own special genre: "monutainment".
But it sounds to me like it's missing the essential thing that makes all theatre work: stimulation of the audience's imagination. Take the same story, for example, done in a fabulous low-tech style a few years ago at BAC, the fringe's answer to the National Theatre. BAC's then artistic director Tom Morris, who recently co-directed War Horse for the National, collaborated with Carl Heap to create that same epic story with only theatre magic. No horses. No sand. Just invention and spark to make the audience leap into the story. In that show, with just a few flags, chairs and a cheering audience, they created a Hippodrome that gave Charlton Heston a run for his money.
The best theatre I have seen has managed to achieve the most amazing and extraordinary images with some of the simplest gestures and ideas. There was Robert Lepage floating weightlessly across the stage without the use of any harnesses in The Far Side of the Moon. Or David Glass creating the world of Gormenghast with some brilliant mime and a few bedsheets. And the puppets in War Horse and the National's version of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials conjured up whole worlds without strings attached. The lesson? When it comes to live performance, big isn't necessarily best. Good theatre, in line with all the best art, should make us work, think and use our imagination.
