Today, for Olivia's birthday*, we went to see A. C. T. production of Black Watch, about the famous Scottish military regiment and its final days before being amalgamated into the Royal Regiment of Scotland during the Iraq War. The staging was inventive, and the play as designed by the National Theatre of Scotland cannot be performed on an ordinary stage. So instead, the play was put on in the old Mission Armory's drill court, one hopes after a quick hosing down by the kink.com crew that owns the joint now.
Black Watch concerns, and circles around, a 2004 incident in which three soldiers and their interpreter (not portrayed on stage) were killed by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint. Black Watch training did not take into account suicide bombings, and the Black Watch was moved into this fatal position on the request of the United States, which many in Scotland saw as a political move to minimize US casualties during George W. Bush's re-election campaign. We're told that 800 members of the Black Watch were sent to do the job previously being done by 4000 US Marines.
The play, like too many plays, also concerns the play itself. The framing device involves the playwright meeting members of the Watch who survived the deployment and interviewing them about their experiences, for the play. This leads to some all-too-typical tedium. The middle-class writer is scandalized by the course manners of these working-class veterans, what with their jokes about sex and vaguely physical piss-taking. Oh heavens, the ruffians! Public school didn't prepare me for this...but I shall have my revenge by fetishizing this behavior (or is it behaviour??) in my play. It does serve a semi-useful purpose in that we get to see the boys out of uniform, but the scenes are still not so effective as they move too swiftly from ribaldry to group therapy. There are also some dance routines, most of which are thirty seconds too long, except for the ones that are a minute too long.
Far more effective is the history of the Black Watch, as recited by Cammy as he is dressed and undressed, picked up and put down, and moved across the red carpet on stage by members of the regiment. It's a quick tour from the first half of the eighteenth century to today, and it works extremely well. There are also some songs, which are effective. See:
And:
Also great are the episodes of sudden violence, and the authentic fuck-n-cunt dialogue. Indeed, every human being alive is a cunt. "Loads of cunts" says one of the soldiers when asked about what movie stars they'd talk about on their downtime, "Ewan McGregor." When the US bombs Iraq, the Iraqi "cunts cannae even fight back." The Black Watch is on the fringes of the action, just watching. (In the play, they're watching TV footage, projected against a wall.) The ultimate baddies are not the Iraqis or the insurgents, but the arrogant and dangerous Americans, some of whom come sniffing around to trade US-issue cots for authentic tam o'shanters, and then the cots never show up. Oh, and the Black Watch wasn't home by Christmas either.
Black Watch might have been more urgent in 2006 when it was first performed just two years after the events portrayed. Watching in 2013, it's a little hard to separate from resurgent Scottish nationalism. As Cammy says, the Black Watch in its long history specialized in fighting insurgent tribes. After all, "we're a tribal people." Aside from a few minor complaints, I'd say this is a must-see play, and not for its look at the Iraqi war, but at what it hints at to come in Europe.
*She was born in Glasgow.
Black Watch concerns, and circles around, a 2004 incident in which three soldiers and their interpreter (not portrayed on stage) were killed by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint. Black Watch training did not take into account suicide bombings, and the Black Watch was moved into this fatal position on the request of the United States, which many in Scotland saw as a political move to minimize US casualties during George W. Bush's re-election campaign. We're told that 800 members of the Black Watch were sent to do the job previously being done by 4000 US Marines.
The play, like too many plays, also concerns the play itself. The framing device involves the playwright meeting members of the Watch who survived the deployment and interviewing them about their experiences, for the play. This leads to some all-too-typical tedium. The middle-class writer is scandalized by the course manners of these working-class veterans, what with their jokes about sex and vaguely physical piss-taking. Oh heavens, the ruffians! Public school didn't prepare me for this...but I shall have my revenge by fetishizing this behavior (or is it behaviour??) in my play. It does serve a semi-useful purpose in that we get to see the boys out of uniform, but the scenes are still not so effective as they move too swiftly from ribaldry to group therapy. There are also some dance routines, most of which are thirty seconds too long, except for the ones that are a minute too long.
Far more effective is the history of the Black Watch, as recited by Cammy as he is dressed and undressed, picked up and put down, and moved across the red carpet on stage by members of the regiment. It's a quick tour from the first half of the eighteenth century to today, and it works extremely well. There are also some songs, which are effective. See:
And:
Also great are the episodes of sudden violence, and the authentic fuck-n-cunt dialogue. Indeed, every human being alive is a cunt. "Loads of cunts" says one of the soldiers when asked about what movie stars they'd talk about on their downtime, "Ewan McGregor." When the US bombs Iraq, the Iraqi "cunts cannae even fight back." The Black Watch is on the fringes of the action, just watching. (In the play, they're watching TV footage, projected against a wall.) The ultimate baddies are not the Iraqis or the insurgents, but the arrogant and dangerous Americans, some of whom come sniffing around to trade US-issue cots for authentic tam o'shanters, and then the cots never show up. Oh, and the Black Watch wasn't home by Christmas either.
Black Watch might have been more urgent in 2006 when it was first performed just two years after the events portrayed. Watching in 2013, it's a little hard to separate from resurgent Scottish nationalism. As Cammy says, the Black Watch in its long history specialized in fighting insurgent tribes. After all, "we're a tribal people." Aside from a few minor complaints, I'd say this is a must-see play, and not for its look at the Iraqi war, but at what it hints at to come in Europe.
*She was born in Glasgow.