The 22 characters in Our Country’s Good are played by 10 actors, most of whom take double or triple roles, with no regard for gender or skin colour.Robert Workman
One of the theatre's favourite self-referential devices is the play within a play, especially when that embedded play is performed by amateurs. Typically it's a vehicle for comedy – most famously in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, where bumbling tradesmen try to stage the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. Occasionally it's been used for darker purposes, as in Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, where asylum inmates re-enact the bloody anarchy of the French Revolution.
But in Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, amateur play-making becomes a source of empowerment and inspiration.
Wertenbaker's celebrated 1988 play, revived last year in London's West End and now on tour to Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre, concerns a parcel of grubby convicts in 18th-century Australia who set out to perform a sparkling Restoration comedy.
Wertenbaker transports us to Sydney Cove in the 1780s, where the First Fleet of British settlers – most of them criminals under the guard of Royal Marines – have established a penal colony. The colony's governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, is a progressive thinker who quotes Rousseau and favours reform over punishment. To that end, he assigns young Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark, a theatre enthusiast, with the task of directing the inmates in a performance of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer.
These actors being not just amateurs, but also thieves, whores and ruffians, there's a fair share of dark comedy in the process. How do you stage a play when some of your cast members can't even read the script? Or when they're being yanked out of rehearsals for a brutal flogging? And what recourse does a director have when one of his leading ladies is on trial for petty theft and may be hanged before opening night?
Yet despite such setbacks, Phillip's hopes are realized as the convicts, in the process of pretending to be Restoration ladies and fops, reveal their true and better selves.
Our Country's Good is based on Australian author Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker, which in turn was inspired by a real production of The Recruiting Officer staged by felons in New South Wales in 1789. In Wertenbaker's hands, it becomes an eloquent argument for the transformative power of theatre, which struck a chord with its first audiences in the philistine Thatcher era. It continues to resonate, although in retrospect it sometimes makes that argument a little too pointedly.
Her didactic urges aside, Wertenbaker's writing is witty and robust, filled with colourful period slang (and some timeless obscenities). And her richly drawn rogues and bawds could have tumbled out of a Hogarth painting. The 22 characters are played by 10 actors, most of whom take double or triple roles with no regard for gender or skin colour. That was a bold move a quarter-century ago, but happily is just a matter of course today. And for anyone who still balks at it, Wertenbaker has one of her characters sharply remind us that theatre isn't for people without imaginations.
This 25th-anniversary revival is directed by the legendary Max Stafford-Clark, who commissioned the play and helmed its original production at London's Royal Court Theatre. Now artistic director of the nomadic Out of Joint company, he has recruited a first-rate ensemble who tuck into their roles with gusto.
Not surprisingly, the convicts make the strongest impression. Kathryn O'Reilly, her face as sour as a crate of lemons, is at first hilarious, then sympathetic, as the fearsome thief Liz Morden. David Newman's curly-headed pickpocket Sideway proves a zealous ham in the grand tradition of Shakespeare's Nick Bottom. Jessica Tomchak taps the latent drama queen in shy Mary Brenham, the girl who steals Ralph's heart. And Victoria Gee is endearingly gawky as her pal, the homesick Devon lass Dabby Bryant.
Sam Graham rivals O'Reilly for the show's standout performance as the ailing, alcoholic midshipman Harry Brewer, jealous lover of the prostitute Duckling Smith (a stoic Anna Tierney). Nathan Ives-Moiba is amusingly callow as Ralph. Richard Neale deals in striking contrasts as Ralph's sadistic Scottish nemesis, Major Ross, and the timid Irish hangman Ketch Freeman. Simon Darwen, on the other hand, is admirable both as the liberal governor Phillip and the nascent Jewish writer Wisehammer.
Stafford-Clark's direction takes its cues from Brecht, with actors announcing the scene titles and donning wigs and costumes in full view of the audience. His staging is artfully minimal. Tim Shortall's simple set of wood and cloth is at once nautical and theatrical, placed before a backdrop like a J.M.W. Turner painting of vast sky and shimmering sea. Johanna Town's lighting has a tropical brightness, while Andy Smith's sound design fills the air with birdsong, bugle calls and an eerie electronic hum.
Our Country's Good has diminished a little in my estimation since I first saw it two decades ago. And while this production is strong in comedy and characterization, it's never as moving as it aims to be. That said, it succeeds in achieving the goals that Ralph Clark demands of his convict cast – to provide the audience with "a pleasurable, intelligible and memorable evening."