Our Country's Good

The Company of Our Country's Good. Courtesy of Mirvish Productions.

Theatre is a redeeming force in Timberlake Wertenbaker's Olivier Award-winning show Our Country's Good, now playing at the Royal Alex.

First staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1988, the play concerns the lives of the officers and convicts—a group of about 734 theives, murderers and prostitutes—that made up Australia's first penal colony at Sydney Cove, New South Wales in the 1780s. Adapted from Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker, the show dramatizes how a production of George Farquhar's The Recruting Officer was actually staged at the penal colony on June 4, 1789, with a cast comprised of criminals.

In Our Country's Good, Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark (Nathan Ives-Moiba) directs a wayward crew of "actors," including the modest Mary Brenham (Jessica Tomchak), with whom he eventually begins an off-stage romantic relationship, her brassy friend Dabby Bryant (Victoria Gee), Ketch Freeman (Richard Neale), the colony's first hangman, and the aspiring writer John Wisehammer (Simon Darwen). Despite a difficult start, Clark is determined that the play will be a success, and he manages to convince even the most hardened of the group, the dangerous Liz Morden (Kathryn O'Reilly), who is scheduled for execution, to embrace freedom in the guise of performance. Supported by the benevolent Governor Phillip (also played by Darwen), Clark gives this group of lost souls a break from the brutality of their everyday lives through the power of imagination, and in doing so, restores his own faith in humanity.

Featuring a talented ensemble, this funny, intelligent and touching historical drama is as entertaining as it is interesting. Gee and O'Reilly are particularly amusing as the challenging criminals Dabby Bryant and Liz Morden. Sam Graham also steals scenes as the alcoholic midshipman Harry Brewer who falls for the convict Duckling Smith (Anna Tierney), and Ives-Moiba and Tomchak are believably enraptured with one another as Ralph Clark and Mary Brenham.

Director Max Stafford-Clark's production is beautifully staged and fast-paced for a show with a running time of two-and-a-half hours. Audiences leave with a new appreciation of Australia's beginnings, as well as for the medium of theatre, and all of its virtues.

Our Country's Good runs until October 26 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. Visit mirvish.com for more information and to buy tickets.