Black Watch was nothing of what I expected. I had heard a brief description of the plot, a documentary type format interviewing young soldiers about their time in Iraq. I was not excited to see Black Watch, in fact I was rather dreading it. I expected it to be too serious and too experimental. I was proved completely wrong within a couple of minutes. It was a brilliant piece of theatre that was truly innovating and completely engaging.
One of the first few moments of play consisted or soldiers ripping out from the center of the pool table, emerging from the red felt in full battle gear, guns at the ready. It painted such a beautiful and haunting image on the stage. Moments like these would really make the play such a beautiful work. Even though it was set in a time of war and violence, all the staging and movement was eerily poetic in nature. I was constantly being surprised by strange musical numbers that both seemed to come out of now where but at the same time were seamless with the story. The strong male voices were powerful and so expressive. Like I said before it was rather haunting.
When I went in I never expected song and dance but this production had both. To accompany the moving musical numbers there were also dance like segments. The soldiers, manliest of men moving about in sharp yet graceful “fighting” dance movements throwing each other around with such ease. All the movements in the play were in fact smooth and seamless. In one segment a soldier is changed from costume to costume and carried about by various actors all while continually giving a monologue about the history of the Black Watch. It was testament to both the talent of the writer as well of the actors to keep up with such a constant flow of speech and movement. In fact that is a perfect word to describe the entire piece, seamless.
While the acting was by far the best I had seen in London, the technical and design aspects of the play were just as impressive. It was such an unconventional space. In fact when we were first seated it reminded me more of sporting arena than a theatre. The concrete floors and metal riggings at either end seemed foreign to me at the beginning of the play, but by the end it made only perfect sense. I find it hard to imagine this play being produced in any other format, I think it would be far less effective.
The last thing I have to talk about is the overall sense of time in the work. It was fascinating to me how, once again, the shift from past to present was so seamless. One moment the soldiers would be conversing in the bar and the next moment they would be taken back to their time in Iraq. It was the use of such simple objects such as the pool table that functioned not only as a pool table in the bar where they were being interviewed but also as the back of the truck they were driven around in. It occurred to me how it took only a simple everyday object to remind the soldier just what they had seen.
Overall the work was dramatic and beautiful with a strange twist of comedy. It made me re-evaluate my stance on the war in Iraq and about war life in general. It was heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time and I will never forget this performance.
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