Our Country's Good

This award-winning play by Timberlake Wertenbaker was first performed at London’s Royal Court in 1988 and has lost none of its power. It tells the harrowing but also uplifting story of some of the first convicts to be transported to Australia and their jailers, Royal Marines who were no more pleased to be where they were sent then their prisoners.It opens onboard the ship that is transporting them, to the soundtrack of a severe flogging. The recipient’s crime – answering back to a shipman. This sets the tone for an atmosphere of fear when they get to shore and the first settlement begins. Punishments are cruel and meted out for petty crimes, hanging being the sanction for even petty theft. In order to boost morale and have a civilising effect, Lieutenant Ralph Clark (played with real sympathy by Russ Crook) hits on the idea of getting his charges to perform a play, ironically George Farquhar’s comedy, The Recruiting Officer. The rest of the tale revolves around rehearsals and how he eventually brings this rabble of lost souls to an experience of unity and dignity.This amateur group are appearing on the Fringe for the first time, and as such this is a brave attempt at a difficult play. The performances vary in quality hugely, with fine performances from Sylvia Smith as aging crim Liz Morden and Becky Harwood as slutty Duckling who learns to know love only tragically too late. Other performances are less convincing, either rather too melodramatically evil or badly underpowered vocally and emotionally. Director Richard Hill has done okay with a difficult space with entrances only possible from upstage though a lot of it is badly underlit. The flow of the piece has also been rendered difficult because the script is radically cut to only an hour and a half.If you have never seen the play this is worth a look if only to remind us of the power of drama as celebrated by the play itself. It also reminds us, as there is clamour for stricter punishments (capital and corporal) in a seemingly crime ridden society that once any kind of physical punishment is sanctioned by a society we have lost the plot.