Fury and folly of Iraq war

This powerful play has been stunning audiences around the world for almost five years since its debut at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival. It has won a string of awards and is now on its third tour.

It returned to the arts centre this week with a new cast but still blew away the audience in the Butterworth Hall with its dramatic portrayal of the soldiers’ life during the Iraq war.

The exuberance of the all-male cast helps to produce a high-energy production, performed in a narrow strip of stage jammed between two steep banks of the audience.

People sitting on the front row are so close to the action that they could be in fear of injury from flailing arms, legs and weapons or deafness from the loud bangs. But thanks to the controlled athleticism of the actors and excellent choreography no-one comes to grief as a result of the marching and fighting. And the shouting and singing helps to evoke the atmosphere of war.

In 2004, the Black Watch was sent to replace American troops at Camp Dogwood in Iraq, a deployment seen as a cynical political move and a no-win situation for the regiment. Later it was announced that the regiment was to be amalgamated with five others. The play deals with this threat to the traditions of the Black Watch by whizzing through its history in a remarkable scene of quick uniform changes.

One of the soldiers Cammy, played by the excellent Jack Lowden, is stripped and redressed several times by the others as he tells the story of the Black Watch’s involvement in military campaigns over 300 years.

Another stand-out scene involves a suicide bombing which kills three members of the regiment. Keith Fleming gives a good performance as the sergeant killed in the bombing and doubles as the writer who is constantly bullied by the macho soldiers when he interviews them in Scotland after their return from Iraq.

The strains within the regiment are brought out in the aggressive confrontations between the soldiers. And the futility of the war is summed up well by the CO, played by Ian Pirie: “It takes 300 years to build an army that’s admired and respected around the world. But it only takes three years pissing about in the desert in the biggest western foreign policy disaster ever to f*** it up completely.”

Verdict: Stunning performance

Peter Gawthorpe