Black Watch Play Coming to Canada, USA

[The Bread Guy]

If there's an interest, I'll share any information I find on Canadian and American show dates.

Shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act - http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#rid-33409

Black Watch goes on global parade
Anna Millar, Scotland on Sunday, 8 Oct 06
http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1489292006

"MAGNIFICENT", "an epic", and "a triumph": just some of the praise showered on the runaway success story of this year's Fringe.

But now - two months after stunning Festival audiences - the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) has unveiled its plan to parade Black Watch across the globe.

The play, described as an unauthorised biography of the legendary regiment, will open at venues across Scotland early next year, including Perth - the historic home of the Black Watch - Dundee, Glasgow, Inverness and Dumfries.

In the summer, the NTS will make its first foray across the Border, staging the play in London, followed in 2008 by performances in France, Germany, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But NTS executive director Neil Murray insisted Black Watch would stay true to its origins, revealing there would be no changes to the play's cast of relative unknowns, and ruling out potentially lucrative TV and cinema spin-offs.

And there will be no compromise over the staging of the play, which during the Festival took place in a disused Edinburgh drill hall. Murray revealed the NTS has taken the unusual step of employing professional location scouts to find similar venues across Scotland, the UK and the world. A bid has already gone in for Fort George, 11 miles outside Inverness, which is still functioning as an army barracks.

Written by Gregory Burke, the three-week Festival run of the play sold out every night and even attracted a six-star rating from one reviewer. Speculation about how NTS would build on that success has been rife ever since.

Murray told Scotland on Sunday: "We can't believe the exposure, the response to the work has been fantastic. We are being very level-headed about it. [Black Watch] has opened massive doors for us in Scotland, the UK and internationally. We're much better known after six months than we could ever have imagined we would be.

"If it had been in a conventional theatre there's no question it would have been programmed by now. It would have a Scottish tour and a London venue and international venues signed and secured.

"The piece was a massive success because of the space, how the show has been designed and the philosophy behind the show. To do that show again successfully we have to put as much time and investment into it as we did to find the drill hall in Edinburgh. We're doing it the right way. It's about piecing together pieces of the jigsaw now."

Murray flatly denied rumours a big-name star would - or could - replace any of the relatively unknown actors of the original Fringe show.

He said: "No.We don't need to. Black Watch is the star. That cast were flawless, so who would we want to drop?"

Meanwhile, Black Watch director John Tiffany has ruled out a screen version of the play. He said: "At the moment it's 100% about keeping it as a theatrical experience and trying to find suitable spaces for that. I have always been firm that I did not want to do a diluted version of it.

"I couldn't be less interested in a film or television version. It's a pure theatre experience. How would you do scenes like the red carpet or the letters from home? It would be a disaster."

"It will never go to Broadway or Shaftesbury Avenue and there's something very liberating about that. It has proved it doesn't need a star to be successful."

But Tiffany revealed the play could nonetheless appear on the small screen. "I am open to the idea of maybe working with someone like BBC Scotland, filming the play at one of the venues on tour, the audience would be there. We have been in talks about the logistics of such a project."

Tiffany said the Scottish leg of the tour should be a priority: "My focus is really on the Scottish audience. I think in many ways it's interesting that people are keen to see where we're taking it in London and abroad because I'm very keen that first and foremost we take it to the people of Scotland who wanted to but didn't get the chance to see it.

"The most important thing is that we retain that 'Tattoo' feel to it. We don't want to be too precious about it, but we do want to recreate that wonderful experience that people had over the festival: it's about really capturing the scale and sense of event that we had there."

Major Ronnie Proctor, a former Black Watch officer who now runs the regimental museum in Perth, said: "I thought the play was very good and we have been in discussions about where is suitable.

"Somewhere like Fort George - the oldest military establishment in Scotland - would certainly be interesting but there is a lot to think about as it's still a working building and availability will be restricted."

Patricia Ferguson, Scottish Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, said: "It is no surprise that they have such an extensive tour lined up. It was universally acclaimed for its writing, direction and incredible performances during the festival and our National Theatre should be congratulated for its achievement."

A spokeswoman for national tourism agency VisitScotland said: "Any chance to put our national companies on a world stage is a great opportunity to showcase not only Scotland but the incredible talent the country is currently producing."

The National Theatre of Scotland turned down an offer from the National Theatre of London's Olivier Theatre earlier this month, deeming it too conventional a space for the production.

 

[Gordon Angus Mackinlay]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

the play Black Watch, is a extremely effective piece of stage work.  It would not be a Hollywood (or Bollywood) epic, nor a Broadway extreme production, it is a very simple play performed in an ideal for it location, a Army drill hall.  There has been non-stop reviews of it, and I have had a lot of feedback from people varying in age from their twenties to their eighties (admittedly all having been (are) soldiers.  And every performance at the Edinburgh Festival was a complete sell out, usually in the last days even the best performances have low capacity.

I have received straight after its first performance, two emails expounding the impression that it had made on the writers (one being my eldest brother, who would not know culture if he fell over it!), both stating what an impact it had made on them.  The review below puts it far better than I.
Yours,
G/.
G.A.MACKINLAY

The hit of the Fringe is as tough, daring and battle-hardened as the squaddies it portrays
(Filed: 07/08/2006) The Telegraph

Dominic Cavendish reviews Black Watch at Drill Hall

It might seem premature to announce that the most compelling theatre experience of the entire Fringe has already been unveiled, but if there's a more powerful, urgent, perfectly realised piece of work than Gregory Burke's Black Watch out there, I'll undertake to run to Baghdad and back.
 
Dunfermline-born Burke, you may recall, caused quite a sensation five years ago at the Traverse with Gagarin Way, a brutally funny thriller about anti-globalisation.

This play, "an unauthorised biography of the legendary Scottish regiment", and based on interviews with former soldiers, once again catches the mood of the moment by allowing some of the toughest, most guarded men in the land to talk frankly, freely - and often filthily - about the disillusionment of their time in Iraq.

Drolly showing his own civilian self (played by Paul Rattray) nervously firing off questions to half a dozen mistrustful and at times menacing ex-squaddies, Burke betrays a refreshing concern not to let things get too worthy.

The gallows' humour of fatigued military men has been captured with greater sharpness than most TV crews could muster: life at the hellish Camp Dogwood is blithely compared to "Perth Road [Dundee] on a Saturday night"; the mission cynically summed up as being "about porn and petrol".

Impartial though the piece is, Burke and director John Tiffany know that to get under their subjects' battle-hardened skin, you also need to be as daring as they are.

Hence, in complement to Davey Anderson's rousing reworkings of old marching songs, physical theatre expert Steven Hoggett has been drafted in to help fill the vast university Drill Hall with tightly choreographed athletic activity. It's like watching a 10-man Tattoo, only there's more room for emotionally expressive manoeuvre.

As the action zips between group interviews in Scotland and the hot, hate-filled reality of Iraq, you're constantly ambushed by the creative team's ingenuity.

An overturned pool table is used to suggest a cramped personnel carrier. One of the soldiers (Brian Ferguson's Cammy) becomes a whirling human mannequin, his body swathed in the different uniforms of the Black Watch down the years.

The routine of opening letters from home turns into an outbreak of private ritualised movements, poignantly eloquent of internal anguish.

Finally, unforgettably, the bloody impact of a suicide bomb is rendered in devastating slow-motion. Here, at last, is an evening that accords the UK's long-suffering soldiery some of the public respect they deserve.

Until August 27. Tickets: 0131 228 1404

 

[The Bread Guy]

Very interesting - I've written the theatre company for more information, reminding them that, (sadly) unlike the UK, there still IS a Black Watch in Canada, so who knows if Montreal is going to be a venue?

I love the idea of keeping the original cast for the world tour, and the idea of not aiming for a movie (other than filming a show in the theatre).  I've been quite often disappointed by film adaptations of books, so I think this would be the same.