Description
Book SynopsisAustralia 1789. A young married lieutenant is directing rehearsals of the first play ever to be staged in that country. With only two copies of the text, a cast of convicts, and one leading lady who may be about to be hanged, conditions are hardly ideal...
Winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988, and many other major awards, Our Country''s Good premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1988 and opened on Broadway in 1991. ''Rarely has the redemptive, transcendental power of theatre been argued with such eloquence and passion.'' Georgina Brown, Independent
It is published here in a new Student Edition, alongside commentary and notes by Sophie Bush.
The commentary includes a chronology of the play and the playwright's life and work as well as discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created.
Trade ReviewWertenbaker has searched history and found in it a humanistic lesson for hard modern times: rough, sombre, undogmatic and warm * The Sunday Times *
Highly theatrical, often funny and at times dark and disturbing, it sets an infant civilization on the stage with clarity, economy and insight. -- Charles Spencer * Daily Telegraph *
Wertenbaker's play remains terrifyingly relevant … Wertenbaker scarcely puts a foot wrong. She … expands the argument about the practical wisdom of putting on a play into a wider debate about crime and punishment and, when an actor-convict on the eve of hanging breaks her self-incriminating vow of silence, movingly demonstrates the power of drama to change minds. -- Michael Billington * Guardian *
Table of ContentsCommentary Chronology: A timeline of Wertenbaker’s life and works, set alongside key theatrical, social and political events of the period.
Contexts: - The 1780s: Attitudes to Crime and Punishment; The First Fleet and the Penal Colony of New South Wales; Theatrical Styles and Conventions;
The Recruiting Officer - The 1980s: Attitudes to Crime and Punishment; Theatre Funding; The Royal Court, Max Stafford-Clark and the ‘Joint Stock Method’;
The Playmaker - Timberlake Wertenbaker
Themes: - Guilt and Innocence; Punishment, Rehabilitation and Redemption; The Value of Theatre; Language, Silence and Voice; Colonialism
Dramatic Devices: - Language(s): Regional Dialects; Articulacy and Inarticulacy; The Aborigine - Episodic Structure - Theatrical Style: Multi-roling and Cross-casting; Brechtian Aesthetic - Options for Design
Production History - A Timeline
Critical Reception - Critical response, recognition and influence - The Play Today
Academic Debate: A brief discussion of academic responses to the play
Further Study: A bibliography of texts for further study - A discussion of Comparative Literature (by Wertenbaker and others)
PLAY TEXT - OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD
