After the success of His Dark Materials and Coram Boy, the National Theatre has acquired a deserved reputation for its epic family shows. With War Horse, based on the novel by the former children's laureate Michael Morpurgo, it has topped even those magnificent productions. Frankly this looked an impossible book to stage. It tells the story of the First World War through the eyes of a horse, Joey, who is sold to a yeomanry cavalry division, shipped off to France, serves first on the British and then, after being captured, on the German sides before ending up wounded and wandering in no-man's land. But Joey is pursued by his young master, Albert, who enlists at the age of 16 with the express purpose of finding his beloved horse amid the carnage of the trenches. As Black Beauty proved, it's perfectly possible to tell a story through the eyes, and in the words, of a horse. But how on earth do you put a life-size horse on stage, and make it the most important character in the show?

When I heard the answer was going to be puppetry, my heart sank. Puppets are often an embarrassment, involving a lot of effort and fuss for negligible returns. Not here however. Joey and the other horses in the show are truly magnificent creations by the Handspring Puppet Company which don't aim for picturesque realism but with their wooden framework, translucent fabric skins, and extraordinary mobility somehow capture the very essence of everything equine. This is much more than a puppet show, however. Nick Stafford's powerful adaptation of Morpurgo's novel, which wisely ditches Joey's narrative and tells the story through dialogue among the human characters, brilliantly captures not only the mysterious and intense relationship that can exist between humans and animals, but also the dreadful waste and terror of the Great War.

Like the poems of Wilfred Owen, this often virtuosic production, superbly designed by Rae Smith, brilliantly lit by Paule Constable and using all the technical resources of the Olivier stage, captures "the pity of war, the pity war distilled". The sight of horses and sword-brandishing soldiers charging across no-man's land into great blasts of machine gun fire encapsulates the futility of the conflict. And though it might seem sentimental to conjure the suffering of war through the agonies of dumb animals, it somehow doesn't feel like that. There is something so noble about these astonishingly lifelike puppets, whose movements and sounds are so meticulously caught by their operatives, that they can withstand the weight of emotion placed on them. And the human cast is outstanding too with especially moving performances from Luke Treadaway as the young and devoted Albert and Angus Wright as a good, horse-loving German.

Directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, with evocative music by Adrian Sutton and moving songs by that great folkie, John Tams, War Horse is much more than a show for kids. It is one of the most powerfully moving and imaginative productions of the year, whatever age you happen to be.