Black Watch

GRUNT AND CENTER Emun Elliott goes on patrol..

MANUEL HARLAN

Our ongoing military misadventure in Iraq—sold with fear and lies, bungled bloodily and spun to the point of ideological incoherence by the White House—is a war beneath the honor of its warriors. That is one suggestive message of Black Watch, the intensely thrilling martial spectacle from the National Theatre of Scotland. The senses-pummeling drama (augmented with stylized movement and marching drills) doesn’t settle for easy pacifist positions; it assumes that countries need soldiers and that war is a necessary evil. But this passionate, gritty homage to the craft of battle draws the line at the imperialist quagmire of Iraq.

Military historians or prowar pundits might deem this slant—distilled by playwright Gregory Burke from interviews he conducted with Scottish ex-infantrymen—hypocritical or pat. Surely, the Black Watch’s storied fighters have engaged in other unpopular, morally indefensible wars over their regiment’s 266-year history. To be fair, neither Burke nor his wildly inventive director, John Tiffany (seconded by movement director Steven Hoggett and composer Davey Anderson), makes excuses for their swaggering, profane subjects. Instead, through a series of scenes that toggle between the Iraqi desert and months later in a pub in Fife where the cagey vets are interviewed by Burke’s proxy (Paul Higgins), a cracked, layered portrait of comradeship, working-class pride and folk tradition emerges.

The sheer physical bravado and endurance of the ten-man ensemble is exhilarating, bolstered by a sound and light design that surrounds you with screaming jets, mortar fire and suicide bombers. Burke’s inspired language is starkly beautiful, even when bobbing in a swamp of thuggish obscenities (hundreds of “coont”s and “fookin”s spat out). The fiery young cast embodies the ideal of ensemble performance. My only regret—and it’s a selfishly nationalist one—is that our boys didn’t think of this first.