Robert Tanitch reviews Our Country’s Good at National Theatre
Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play is based on The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally and is set in the penal colony of Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia, in 1788.
Our Country’s Good was instantly recognised as a modern classic on its first production at the Royal Court in 1988 and has been regularly revived by its original director, Max Stafford-Clark.
Centre Jason Hughes- Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark
The first Governor of Australia feels very strongly that judgement must be tempered with humanity and that it is his duty to educate the criminals. It is not enough just to punish them.
The Governor wants to rule over responsible human beings, not tyrannize over a group of animals. He gives the go-ahead for the convicts to act in a production of George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer:
“The theatre is an expression of civilization. We belong to a great country, which has spawned great playwrights: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and even in our own time, Sheridan.
Jonathan Livingstone – Caesar, Shalisha James–Davis – Duckling Smith
The convicts will be speaking a refined, literate language and expressing sentiments of a delicacy they are not used to. It. will remind them that there is more to life than crime, punishment.
And we, this colony of a few hundred, will be watching this together, for a few hours we will no longer be despised prisoners and hated gaolers. We will laugh, we may be moved, we may even think a little.”
Needless to say the officers under his command are not impressed by his ideas and do everything they can to stop the production, even to flogging and hanging the cast.
The brutality is shocking; but there are also plenty of good jokes about actors acting, when the convicts are rehearsing, and which everybody (not just actors) can enjoy.
There is one line in particular which always gets a big laugh and that is when the young second lieutenant is directing the convicts and they are worrying about the audience not paying attention and he says, “People who can’t pay attention should not go to the theatre.”
In the original and much more intimate productions by Max Stafford-Clark the special feature was the doubling of roles. The actors who played the convicts also played the officers and it gave the play an extra something.
Director Nadia Fall has to fill the vast stage and so she gives Wertenbaker an epic production. There are many more actors. The Olivier Theatre’s revolving drum comes into play. There is music by Cerys Matthews. There are songs. Something is gained. But also something is lost and I don’t just mean Beethoven’s Fifth as a finale.
There is a strong ensemble cast. Jason Hughes as the second lieutenant, Peter Forbes as a sadistic major, Gary Wood as an aborigine stalking the stage and Caoilfhionn Dunne as the Farquhar heroine, all make an impact.
And so do Ashley McGuire as a termagant, Jodie McNee as a woman wrongly accused of theft, Tadhg Murphy as a reluctant hangman and Lee Ross as a deluded actor who thinks he is as good an actor as David Garrick.
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Featured image Shalisha James –Davis – Duckling Smith, Paul Kaye – Midshipman Harry Brewer
