Playwright: Gregory Burke. At: National Theatre of Scotland at Broadway Armory, 5917 N. Broadway. Phone: 312-595-5600; $38-$45. Runs through: April 10
The National Theatre of Scotland may sound like an august institution, but it was only founded in 2006. And boy, did the theater have a hit on their hands when Gregory Burke's Black Watch debuted that same year during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Not only did Black Watch win an outpouring of critical raves and awards, it has since gone on to tour around the world. Thanks to the hosting of Chicago Shakespeare Theater's international World's Stage series, Black Watch is now briefly ensconced in the Chicago Park District's wholly appropriate Broadway Armory (a venue that operated as an army drill hall during World War I). And any respectable theater fan shouldn't miss it.
Black Watch is a theatrical jolt of Celtic testosterone as it offers up both the history of the legendary Scottish military regiment and its involvement in Iraq this decade. Drawn from soldier interviews and featuring traditional songs, Black Watch is both an insightful and humanistic military drama that largely focuses on the real-life camaraderie of the troops and their traditions (described as "The Golden Thread") stretching back to the mid-1700s.
Like a Scottish military tattoo, Black Watch is staged along an esplanade stage with the audience on either side. Director John Tiffany and his associate, Steven Hoggett, suffuse the staging with brilliant interludes of movement, from the touching pantomimed letters from home sequence to the highly choreographed ten-seconds fighting section (showing both the playful and brutal fighting nature of troops).
Also, with this being a military drama, the fine and energetic cast offers up an amusingly unending stream of profanity and sometimes sexually charged dialogue (don't say you weren't warned). But that only adds to the authentic feel to the whole stunning enterprise.
Jack Lowden plays Cammy, the initially reluctant narrator and ex-soldier who talks with the inquisitive writer of Paul Higgins (a stand-in for playwright Burke). Other standouts include Jamie Quinn as the mischievously bad boy Franz, Chris Starkie as the violently depressed Stewarty, Ian Pirie as the regimental officer and Lord Elgin.
There's also champion bagpiper Cameron Barnes in the cast as Macca, providing a very moving funeral processional elegy near the climax of the drama.
Alhough it's easy to see Black Watch as an anti-Iraq War screed (and against the recent British military policy of regiment amalgamation), the play only does it so from a political angle and lays its hands off the troops. Black Watch compellingly argues the case that the soldiers are only doing their jobs and fighting not for their country per se, but for their friends and comrades at arms. That makes Black Watch both timely and timeless in its examination of the respected Scottish troop.