A Band of Brothers With Camaraderie Forged on the Boards

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FOR two years they have laughed and argued and unwound together over so many pints at so many bars in so many cities: Dublin, Los Angeles, Sydney. Now, in Brooklyn, they are sharing their final beers before going their separate ways.

The 10 Scottish actors of “Black Watch,” the hit play about a tour of duty of their country’s soldiers in Iraq, are no ordinary theatrical ensemble. Touring on and off together since 2006, after a short run in Scotland, the actors (and their occasional replacements) have become as much a unit as the soldiers they portray onstage. And like those soldiers, who passed the darkness together in Falluja, the men of “Black Watch” have to say goodbye. The tour closes for good on Sunday at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

But not until after a few more pints.

“It’s going to be sad for me, a very emotional night on the 21st of December, when ‘Black Watch’ comes to a close,” said Jonathan Holt, one of the thickly accented actors who gathered around a table on a recent night at their postperformance pub of choice, the Water Street Restaurant and Lounge in Dumbo. “I think maybe I’ve had my shot at the best play of my life.”


“Black Watch,” named after a famous Scottish regiment that dates to the 18th century, tells the story of a real-life unit’s deadly deployment to Falluja after an American-led battle. The Scottish playwright Gregory Burke interviewed the surviving soldiers in a pub in Fife after the unit returned to Scotland, and the play interweaves these beer-soaked conversations with a portrait of bloody days for the regiment in the Sunni Triangle.

As the actors prepare to return home to Scotland, sentimentality sometimes creeps into their conversations. But the men — mostly in their 20s — say they are talking more about what the experience of the show has meant to them . . .


read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/theater/17blac.html?pagewanted=print