Black Watch
Description
The National Theatre of Scotland’s senses-pummeling, intensely thrilling martial drama—distilled by playwright Gregory Burke from interviews he conducted with Scottish ex-infantrymen —doesn’t settle for easy pacifist positions, but draws the line at the imperialist quagmire in Iraq. The sheer physical bravado and endurance of the ten-man ensemble (directed by John Tiffany) is exhilarating, and the language of Burke’s gritty homage to the craft of battle is starkly beautiful, even when bobbing in a swamp of obscenities.—David Cote