It was a good night to be a Scot in New York: the National Theatre of Scotland�s Black Watch has opened to rapturous reviews and a standing ovation on its first night playing in the Big Apple.

RUTH WISHART in New York and PHIL MILLER Arts Correspondent

It was a good night to be a Scot in New York: the National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch has opened to rapturous reviews and a standing ovation on its first night playing in the Big Apple.

The New York Times called it a "blazing redeemer in the greyness of the current New York theatre season", while the New York Observer reviewer said he had run out of superlatives for Gregory Burke's play and added: "Let's just say that if there comes along another new play and production as stunningly relevant as this one, we'll be blessed."

At the end of the play, performed at the St Ann's Warehouse venue in Brooklyn, the notoriously hard-to-please New York audience leapt to its feet and cheered and clapped and hollered, scenes which should be repeated around the world when the play tours New Zealand, Australia and Canada in the coming years.

Last night Gregory Burke said: "The reaction never ceases to amaze me, it has become a bit of a phenomenon hasn't it? The reviews and the reaction of the audiences have been fantastic.

"It's great not just for me, but for Scotland, the company and everyone involved. I'm thoroughly letting it go to my head for a couple of days - then it's back to reality when I come home on Friday."

In the St Ann's Warehouse restrooms, feisty young New York women found themselves weeping. The New York Times theatre critic, Ben Brantley, also admitted in his glowing review to shedding unexpected tears. A piper greeted the first night audience on Tuesday, which including a sprinkling of the Scottish diaspora and the more curious and intrepid American theatregoers whose antennae had picked up the vibes from the National Theatre's lauded run in Los Angeles, and whose appetite had been subsequently whetted by a preview in the Times.

Sir Sean Connery and Brian Cox had also appeared in the audience for the play's preview, show on Sunday night. Despite all the positivity preceding the New York premiere, Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, and the company admitted to residual nerves about how the audience might react to scenes bitterly critical of US army tactics in the field, especially in Falluja. But those worries proved unfounded.

Martin Segal, the Lincoln Centre's veteran chairman emeritus told her at the post-show party: "This production isn't making any criticisms we haven't felt ourselves. That's what makes it such an important play at a time when a majority of Americans want the troops home."

For Scottish businessman Sir Tom Farmer, catching the production during a work trip, it triggered new thoughts about the conflict.

"It made me think, above all, of the badly wounded men as well as the dead ones. The men for whom productive life is probably over," he said.

As ever, the play's message proved particularly potent for Gulf war veterans who attended. Three young American veterans announced themselves "blown away".

The preview audience had included a Cowdenbeath couple on a trip bought by the wife for the husband who had served with the regiment in Iraq, but whose leave did not correspond with the Scottish production dates.

She had learned little of his time in Iraq from the tense weekly 20-minute calls from the front, she told the company. But she said Black Watch made her understand for the first time what her husband had gone through.

What the critics said...
Ben Brantley, New York Times:
"Black Watch arrives like a blazing redeemer in the greyness of the current New York theatre season, a cause for hope after a surfeit of microwaved revivals and ersatz musicals...

A necessary reminder of the transporting power that is unique to theatre...

Black Watch is one of the most richly human works of art to have emerged from this long-lived war."

John Heilpern, New York Observer:
"Put simply, it's essential that you see Black Watch at Brooklyn's St Ann's Warehouse: It's among the most compelling theatre pieces you could wish to see. And weep for, in a sense. The production from Scotland's National Theatre is a magnificent one, and its awesome reality and humaneness will overwhelm you."

Sam Thielman, Variety:
"...It's both a hymn to soldiers and an indictment of the foolishness that makes their jobs necessary, shot through with odd, affecting grace notes of music and dance."