Written for Culture Wars
In May of next year, the 150 British troops still stationed in Iraq will quit the country, a year after the majority were withdrawn. While even one soldier remains there – or, for that matter, in neighbouring Afghanistan – Black Watch will remain a social necessity. The National Theatre of Scotland’s landmark production, first seen in 2006, serves a stark reminder that those of us nestled comfortably in velvet seats are a long, long way from the front line.
Heralded by The Sunday Times as one of the top ten plays of the last decade, it’s hard to approach Black Watch without expectation weighing heavy. Perhaps that explains my initial scepticism. Its first half is almost casual, off-hand. Off-duty soldiers meet the playwright in a Scottish pub for a guarded introduction and interview. With plaudits like these, one expects explosive brilliance from the off. We want our two hours worth of tears and anger dished up with an immediate jugular attack on those responsible.
But Gregory Burke’s script is cleverer than that. It rejects both sensationalism and sentimentality. This is no Journey’s End; there are neither pristine young Raleighs, nor war-stained Stanhopes. Instead, it shows these men as professionals, there of their own choosing. It’s not that they “cannae do anything else,” nor down to exploitation. Much as David Elridge did with the hawkers of Market Boy, Burke heeds the soldiers due respect without the patronising disservice of airbrushing, indeed, without necessarily approving of them.
The squaddies are, at times, childish, defensive and unfeeling; prone to a laddishness that can stray quickly to brutality, as when one jumps the playwright and threatens to snap his arm at the elbow. But they are also proud, humorous and very human, often to the point of fragility. More than anything, they are a unit. One eye is always looking out for another.
Mainly, though, Burke keeps individual personalities at arms length. ‘Who’ is less important than ‘that’. Despite the camaraderie between characterful individuals, the soldiers are, foremost, instances of a species; a small selection standing for the many. Even at the end, as a suicide bomber sends three flying through the air in a nightmarish spectacle, they are identified by number, not name. They don’t die on our terms or those of the media, as heroes or as victims, as young lives cut short; rather, they simply become P4, the army’s code for “dead or dying”. Black Watch’s power resides in its constant restraint; in turning its back on easy, lazy manipulation of our heartstrings.
Part of that discipline is the refusal to attempt full representation. The closer Black Watch gets to the action - the stronger its dread, the more shocking its violence - the further John Tiffany’s production retreats into theatricality. It parries horror with elegance, at times, approaching the splendour of ballet. Faced with in-company tension, the sergeant orders his men to cool off with a ten-second wrestle. Here, choreographed by Stephen Hoggett of Frantic Assembly, it becomes a contagious pas de deux that spreads through the cast. It reeks of testosterone and temper, scarily so, but it also glints with homo-eroticism and grace. Its beauty – its unexpected delicacy, its sudden familiarity – slams home the distance. Sat here, good little liberals all, we don’t know the half of it.
But Burke also forces us to address the unimaginable by turning focus on the familiar. Though they never make the news, everyday pressures and problems don’t defer to the situation’s graveness. Comrades rub up against one another, jokes grate, the drinking water is almost undrinkable and, on one operation, nature comes a-calling. We recognise such symptoms as uncomfortable, but place them in a warzone, where three-inch bullets fly and IEDs lurk, and the situation becomes unfathomable.
Unfathomable, but not impossible – and certainly not pitiful. War, after all, is what the men from Fife & Tayside have trained for and aimed for. Whether aptitude came first or developed along the way – we see glimpses of the training process throughout, but they mostly dismiss it as unsatisfactory preparation – is by the by. “It’s not like any other job,” says Cammy, acting as the group’s spokesman, “It’s part of us. It’s who we are.”
This non-judgemental frankness, Burke’s ability to tell it straight, is what makes Black Watch so vital. Perhaps he damns the war in Iraq too frequently, having a commanding officer describe it as “the biggest western foreign policy disaster ever” and never missing an opportunity to spin it as invasion rather than mission. But that is not the decision of the troops. They are not responsible for their presence in Iraq. They only have to deal with being there and their daily grind, on the knife’s edge of survival, is captured with unflinching empathy and honesty that leaves you shell-shocked.
Its revelations about the everyday realities of a modern soldier’s existence seem, to us, intolerable. And yet, these men do more than just endure. There are no tears to be had here. There is no fierce sense of injustice or righteousness. There is just something entirely glad its not you, because you simply couldn’t do it. And a deeply felt respect – not untinged with incomprehension – for those that can, have done and continue to do.
Photograph: Manuel Harlan
For show information, visit the Barbican's website.
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