Black Watch

On Wednesday night Kasia and I went over to the Barbican to see The National Theatre of Scotland's production of Black Watch.

I first saw the show in its opening week at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival, and although the story of the insensitive betrayal of the regiment, whilst serving in Iraq, is now two years old, rather than just a few weeks fresh, the play still lays bare many of the complex and conflicting forces at work for serving soldiers be they in Kosovo, Basra or Hellmund Province.

At it's heart the work is brilliantly theatrical, merging stunning visual set pieces and choreographed regimental songs with a self referential verbatim text, which not only finds authentic voices for the story, but also gives space to the problems of trusting the theatre to understand without sentiment or prejudice what it means to be a member of the armed forces. It's an 'Oh What a Lovely War' for our times and one of the most exciting pieces of theatre around.