I must confess I have a particular interest in this play – I taught it for A level and came to love it.
Based on Australian author Thomas Kenneally’s novel the play is about the first penal convicts to be sent to Australia and the career of a hapless ambitious army officer taxed with putting on a play (poignantly for midlands audiences George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer written and set in Shrewsbury) using as actors transported convicts, the discarded scum of opulent Georgian society, in a plan to rehabilitate them. The play is a masterpiece which examines how the deprived learn criminality to survive while punishment is merely an inevitable reaction perpetuating and not addressing an ugly cycle.
Although part of Birmingham Rep’s season this is a touring production appearing for only five nights. It’s a revival of Max Stafford-Clark’s original incarnation of the play, but again I have a confession. I saw an unforgettable school production of it more than a dozen years ago directed by Sandra Reeves. Our Country’s Good employs the device of doubling-up the actors as both convicts and their superiors. While Ms Reeves powerfully and unforgettably forbade her young actors to leave the stage so that wonderfully a mere look in the eyes conveyed character change, here they not only leave the stage but change their costumes which particularly in the first half really held up the action unnecessarily. Overall the direction seemed literal, and tired – new, younger directors have moved on in technique. Also the first half saw the actors seeming uncertain of the Old Rep’s space and so sacrificing audibility and pace. The second half snapped by in comparison, the audience repaying this with waves of releasing laughter, but again this left me feeling uneasy.
A situation where rehearsals are continually interrupted by actors being taken off to be flogged or hung has plenty of scope for theatrical in-jokes. But the hopelessness of the exiled convicts seemed unsuitable for the Carry On audience responses it evoked. This play is filled with every kind of irony, but the belly-laughs signalled that something about this production was slightly wrong.
The cast are adequate but seemed generally underpowered. Only Kathryn O’Reilly thrilled as the dignified drab Liz Morden, delivering from the depths of degradation an impassioned plea for civilisation, while Matthew Needham caught the attention as stage-struck convict Sideway. Dominic Thorburn as the hapless officer hoping to make his name in theatre (sounds familiar) worked, but looked a bit too chipper for someone whose cast kept being taken off to be interrogated during rehearsals.
I’m glad to have seen it again, and I’m sorry I missed the author’s post–show talk, but now I’d really rather go back and read the play again.
Our Country’s Good is at the Old Rep, Station Street, Birmingham until September 29 then tours nationally. For tickets phone 0121 236 4455.
