Our Country’s Good (1988) is a history play based on real events that took place in the eighteenth century among the first convicts transported from England to Australian penal colonies. Conditions were extremely harsh there, but Wertenbaker’s play focuses on the convicts’ staging of George Farquhar’s romantic comedy, The Recruiting Officer (1706). This actually occurred at Sydney Cove on 4 June 1789 — the first ever performance of a European play on Australian soil.
Wertenbaker uses the play-within-a-play to explore themes of crime and punishment, the impact of colonial expansion, hierarchies of class and gender and, above all, theatre’s potential to transform individuals and societies. At its premiere in 1988 at the Royal Court theatre, Our Country’s Good was staged alongside The Recruiting Officer featuring the same cast, so that both actors and audience were free to explore the parallels and intersections between the two plays.
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