Black Watch (review)

In its first stop on the American leg of an international tour, the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Black Watchtook the stage with tactical precision. Having seen the original production in the cavernous Edinburgh Drill Hall at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I was anxious to see how this visceral piece of environmental theatre would translate in a more traditional setting. Despite the smaller venue I found the production even more affecting, as it employed the language of the theatre to dissect the theatre of war.

Until the advent of the Iraq war, Scotland’s fabled Black Watch had existed as an elite fighting regiment with a history of distinguished military service reaching back as far as the early eighteenth century. Comprised largely of young men from working-class backgrounds, the regiment has long been a source of pride among families, many of whom trace back their affiliation with it for generations. When the Scottish government decided to meld four of its elite units, including the Black Watch, into a “super regiment” in 2004, the distinctiveness of the regiment,—down to the red hackle, the vulture feather worn as part of the Black Watch uniform since 1795—seemed threatened.

When it debuted two years ago in Edinburgh, Black Watch, by Gregory Burke, received many awards, including a Fringe First. Set in the present though interspersed with flashbacks, the play begins by revealing Burke’s methodology: a reporter arranges to interview a group of Black Watch veterans at their favorite pub. Over drinks, the reporter asks each of the soldiers who have recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq to relate what it was like “over there.”

While the beginning of the play seems to portend another verbatim war drama reminiscent of the Royal Court’s My Name Is Rachel Corrieor the Tricycle Theatre’s Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, Burke takes the increasingly well-worn genre and turns it, literally, on its talking heads. Early in both productions, for example, two actors representing Scottish political figures dispassionately discussed the implications of sending Scottish soldiers into an area of Iraq known as the “triangle of death.” During their discussion, which occurred high above the stage on metal scaffolding at one end of the playing space, a knife pierced the red felt of the pub’s pool table center stage. Two soldiers in full combat gear, weapons drawn, emerged from the belly of the table. In an instant, the pub, as well as the bickering politicians, had vaporized like a mirage in the Iraqi desert.

The touring production of Black Watchmeticulously maintained director John Tiffany’s original concept of a self-reflexive military parade. For the original production, Tiffany recreated the sights, sounds, and esplanade-style seating arrangement of the Tattoo—the world-famous pipe-and-drum show performed annually in front of Edinburgh Castle—as a pointed critique of his country’s tendency to mythologize the glory of the Scottish military. The director also kept these elements in the touring production. A recording of bagpipe and drums played at an almost deafening level as projected images of the Saltire, the national flag of Scotland, swept across the floor and up over the members of the audience taking their seats on opposite sides of the stage. Unlike the Drill Hall, which sits in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, the more intimate and overtly theatrical setting of the Freud Playhouse did not easily conjure up images of the Tattoo, and I could not tell how many other members of the audience made this connection. Patriotic grandstanding, however, is hardly confined to the Scottish military; the nostalgic music coupled with the digital Scottish flag fluttering in a virtual breeze unwittingly prepared the audience to critique the double-edged concepts of patriotism and homeland.

While Black Watchbore the familiar markers of almost any war play—--barracks scenes and battle scenes, letters from home, and soldiers who will never make it home—--what set this production apart was its juxtaposition...