Our Country’s Good

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, many of them illiterate, and one leading lady who may be about to be hanged, conditions are hardly ideal for what will be the antipodean premiere of George Farquhar’s Restoration comedy, The Recruiting Officer.

Our Country’s Good is based on The Playmaker, a novel by Thomas Keneally. It was staged in repertoire with The Recruiting Officer and went on to win the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award and the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award for 1988.