CityLife

Soldiers' tale not to be missed

NEARLY everyone who managed to see Gregory Burke's National Theatre of Scotland play Black Watch at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006 emerged babbling about its brilliance.

One of its biggest fans is The Lowry's artistic director Robert Robson.

"I try to use the words 'truly unmissable' sparingly - but this is the only way to describe Black Watch!," he enthuses.

"We've been trying to bring it to the north west for over two years and during that time this production has received five star reviews across the world, having been performed in New York, Los Angeles and Australia."

With a script that pulls no punches, the play follows members of the Scottish Black Watch regiment as they prepare for tours of duty in the war on terror. When we meet them in a Fife pool room, the squaddies are indulging in all the raucous banter you'd expect from Scottish servicemen.

But as they are flung across the world to an armoured wagon in Iraq, it becomes clear that the rich, 300 year history of their regiment counts for nothing in this brutal conflict and unforgiving climate. It is, unavoidably, a play about Iraq but more than that, it's a play about the regiment and militarism in Scotland's life and history.

It's based on interviews Burke carried out with members of the regiment who served at least two tours in Iraq.

"Sometimes in Scotland we are very quick to make out that wars are something Whitehall conducts, particularly the Iraq war, where it's very easy to sit back and say it's nothing to do with us. But more of the British Army is from Scotland than anywhere else.

"We thought it was going to be a piece of verbatim theatre, but it very quickly turned into something else. The director, John Tiffany, and I always wanted do a sort of pastiche of the military tattoo in Edinburgh each year, so the format with the two banks of seating and a parade ground in the middle came from that."

Gibraltar

Burke was born in Gibraltar, where his father worked in the Naval dockyards, and grew up in Fife. Because he was deaf in one ear, he was ineligible for military service, but otherwise he might well have considered it as a teenager.

"Lots of people I went to school with joined the army," he says. "So it was very easy for me conducting the interviews because I knew the guys, I grew up with them. The only thing that surprised me is that the army is a workplace, and I don't know why I had never realised that before. People who do this job are exactly the same people who used to work down the mines or in the dockyards.

"I don't know if I expected any kind of patriotism. I know most people don't fight for their country or the Queen, they don't fight for anything but the regiment and their mates. The army is very good at giving people a sense of identity. This great tradition appeals to young men.

"I was determined," he continues, "not to go down the easy route of showing soldiers as Neanderthals or little boys being led to the slaughter but to show them as normal people who, through lack of other opportunities or for excitement, join the army.

"They're just guys who live next door to you. But when they come back and people look at the thing they've done as being illegal, an illegal war, they don't feel they are serving the community. They probably think nobody cares about them. At one of the performances, one of the soldiers came in and spoke to the actors. He was quite upset and said he couldn't believe anyone would care enough about him to do this. That was quite humbling.

"It's great to be a success," he concludes, "but at the same time it's a shame it's still relevant, because if it wasn't still relevant it would be better for everybody."

Black Watch is at The Pie Factory from Wednesday until Saturday. The Pie Factory, more frequently used for filming television programmes such as Life On Mars, is part of Salford's Media City development and is just a few minutes walk from The Lowry. £25. Call 0870 787 5780.