by Gregory Burke
Directed by John Tiffany
The National Theatre of Scotland’s Production
at the Luminato Festival,
Varsity Arena
June 6-15, 2008

    All praise to the physical nature of this production. Its cast of ten males cannot be faulted for their performances as soldiers (of the famous Black Watch) on duty in Iraq. Its director knows exactly how to let the show rush out at blazing speed and assault you with its powerful stylization. Its lighting crew finds clever ways to create suspense and simulate terror. And it is the sort of production where you come out praising the form without necessarily celebrating the content. In short, Black Watch is stunningly theatrical, for like its soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld (that arch American buffoon of infamy), it seeks to shock and create awe at its power.

   Using the artifice of an investigative reporter’s research into how the poor soldiers get exploited by the army, it is a documentary play, in which dramatic use is made of letters home, television footage, official chronicle (a history of the Black Watch), field reports, and, of course, the researcher’s evidence. But calling it a documentary play hardly does justice to its theatricality. Using little beside a billiards table, a few chairs, tall towers to replicate ramparts, and a wooden door that also serves as the soldiers’ wagon, the production’s technology (lighting, sound, and televison screens) makes utilitarian magic, though the best effects are often through directorial ingenuity and the cast’s superb physical repertoire. A soldier’s hand and then his body suddenly cracks through the plush red velvet of a billiard table, and he is then joined by a buddy who mimes with him the experience of standing guard in a triangle of death. The billiard table is a clever prop, becoming a convoy truck or desert zone by imaginative direction. Military drills are sometimes turned into exquisite ballets of hands and equipment. Later there is a scene where sign-language is turned into an impressive dance of hands and mime. An arch military recruiter sings a ballad of celebration as two soldiers join him in a highland fling. The history of the Black Watch is delivered as a brilliant sequence of costuming and de-costuming as soldiers quickly dress and then undress one of their own as he is held horizontally aloft by comrades. Hand-to-hand combat drills become violent ballets, and near the end, a roadside explosion is dramatized in a slow-motion upside-down aerial descent of three soldier-victims.

      The rigorous workshops and research sessions have resulted in a production of compelling verisimilitude. There is a beautifully expressive sense of a Saturday session in a mess-hall, with all its attendant vagaries of behaviour and misbehaviour. In one comic scene, two soldiers relax by dropping their trousers in the desert heat while discussing T.E. Lawrence and the famous epic film made in tribute to him. The action swings between comedy and drama. At one moment there is a discussion of gays in film and in the regiment; at another, there is a question of the purpose of the mission in Iraq. Arguments break out about what food to enjoy at a homecoming. And Stewarty, unhinged by his enforced re-deployment, suddenly attacks the Writer in a scene that evokes horror. 

   Each of the actors is well defined in his particular role, and it is unfair to praise some without complimenting the others. However, my attention was especially caught by Ali Craig’s dangerously off-kilter Stewarty, Emun Elliot’s porn-obsessed Fraz, Henry Pettigrew’s mocking and mocked Rossco, and Paul James Corrigan’s naïve Kenzie. Michael Nardone does excellent double duty as the Writer and warm-hearted Sergeant, but bravos to the rest of the company as well.

   And yet, though audiences give this production standing ovations, I question the play itself that seems to be more rigorous in its formal execution than in its self-interrogation. There is nothing new to be learned either about soldiers in general or the Black Watch in particular. Nor is there anything novel about the scenes from the war zone. Yes, indeed, people’s minds are made up about this war. Soldiers are buddies and bullies. There are immense perils to fighting or peace-keeping. The Black Watch has had an impressive history. The Writer in the play asks questions such as: Why did you join the army? What did it feel like to be under attack? Did you keep an account of the people you killed? How do you feel about the Iraqi people? Questions that don’t yield answers that would set a new course for the genre. Like its soldiers, Black Watch is all heart and little mind. Admittedly, it is a thrilling piece of theatre, but once you have said this, you have said almost everything about it. It is definitely worth seeing, but don’t go expecting a great play.

 photos by Manuel Harlan


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