Timberlake Wertenbaker wrote Our Country's Good in 1988 for a specific company of actors at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where it was first presented in conjunction with Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer. The plays were directed by Max Stafford-Clark. The new play emerged from an initial intensive two-week "workshop" in which writer and actors researched the themes and the historical world of The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally and contemporary evidence of military life, prison life and the feelings of the severely oppressed.
In particular the characters of the play are representative of the "First Fleet" which arrived in Botany Bay after eight months at sea in January, 178. The fleet of eleven vessels carried 1,030 people, including 548 male and 188 female convicts, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip in his flagship Sirius. The convicts were relatively young (average age twenty-seven) and mostly guilty of petty theft. These convicts were completely untrained and ill-equipped to start a colony in the new land.
Cast:
Rehearsal Photographs:
