Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 17 April 2007, and touring

Black Watch.

THE EDINBURGH Fringe does strange things to people. It provokes something close to mass hysteria as normally sober citizens clamber for tickets for the shows deemed culturally essential. When September comes around and party spirits subside, it’s tempting to wonder if we weren’t all getting carried away.

Were we, for example, deliriously deluded about John Tiffany’s staging of Gregory Burke’s ‘Black Watch’ for the National Theatre of Scotland? Surely no show could be worth quite as many five-star raves, not to mention the awards – Fringe First, Herald Angel, South Bank Show and the rest.

Wasn’t it just another show about soldiers at war, given a bit of an edge by being staged in an army drill hall and benefiting from the topicality of war in Iraq and the end of the 300-year-old Scottish regiment?

Well, no. Everything you heard was right. Black Watch is a superb production that you should go out of your way to see. From whatever direction you look at it – the unfashionable sympathy for the military in Burke’s script, the testosterone-fuelled performances of the 10-strong all-male cast, the thrilling, transformative use of rhythm and space in Tiffany’s Robert Lepage-influenced direction, the radical sensation of a voice being given to the voiceless and the celebratory blend of dance, song, comedy and drama – it is impossible to fault.

True, there are those who grumble that the play glosses over the regiment’s less than spotless reputation in Northern Ireland, but that seems a pedantic argument in a drama whose focus is clearly elsewhere.

Its aim is not to argue the rights and wrongs of any particular invasion (although there are strong voices against the war in Iraq), but to present the experience of war from the perspective of the individual soldier following orders from his country.

That it does this so well, is part of what makes Black Watch a genuinely radical show, challenging assumptions, shifting perspectives and changing hearts and minds.

(Black Watch plays at the Highland Football Academy, Dingwall, from 11-18 May).

© Mark Fisher, 2007

Links

• National Theatre of Scotland