Our Country's Good

by Timberlake Wertenbaker

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 13 October 2015

This play, based on Thomas Keneally's novel 'The Playmaker', imagines the background to the first known theatrical performance in the colony of New South Wales, which took place to mark the King;s birthday in 1789. The play was George Farquhar's 'The Recruiting Officer'. 'Our Country's Good' was first produced in 1988 at the Royal Court.

Created in the bicentennial year of the first colonisation of Australia, the play investigates the issue of transportation as a punishment for crime. Clearly in one sense the British state was washing its hands of a social problem created by its extremely harsh penal code, but once the convicts and their gaolers arrived at Sydney Cove the whole question of the nature and uses of punishment arose again. Arthur Phillip, the reluctant but humane Governor, hoped for rehabilitation and the creation of a civilised society, in the teeth of opposition from many of his Marine officers. The production of a play becomes the symbol of Phillip's hopes, as some of the convicts involved become transformed by the experience. Wertenbaker and the original director Max Stafford-Clark visited prison performances while preparing for the Royal Court production - the issues are not merely historical. 

In this production some of the intensity of the original conception is dissipated. The Olivier Theatre lends itself to the epic, and the sense of the starkness of the land is well conveyed by the expanse of the sky and the meagreness of the props. The great drum revolve is used to good effect. But this all runs the risk of being too big a space to emphasise the physical constrictions of confinement and isolation. Also, originally, almost all the parts (except that of Ralph Clark, the second lieutenant directing the play) were doubled by the cast, meaning that men and women, officers and convicts, were played by the same actors. In this production, only three parts were doubled, all by men playing men in both cases. This, while giving a more documentary feel to the proceedings, again weakened the dramatic impact and the curious resonance between the experience of convicts acting in a play (and discussing the niceties of acting) and of actors representing an historical event.

Nonetheless, the play's powerful message that the production of drama and the group loyalty engendered by co-operative effort can be transformative even in the most unpromising of situations still shines forth.