Australia 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.

Table of Contents

Commentary

Chronology:

- A timeline of Wertenbaker’s life and works, set alongside key theatrical, social and political events of the period.

Contexts:

- Timberlake Wertenbaker

Themes:

- Guilt and Innocence; Punishment, Rehabilitation and Redemption; The Value of Theatre; Language, Silence and Voice; Colonialism

Dramatic Devices:

- Episodic Structure

- 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