Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good
Page to Stage series – highly accessible guides to the world's best-known plays, written by established theatre professionals to show how the plays come to life on the stage.
'Modern classic' was the fitting accolade bestowed on Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good soon after its premiere in 1988 at the Royal Court Theatre, London. The play tells how a company of convicts staged George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer in the early days of the Australian penal colony.
Having directed the premiere, Max Stafford-Clark brings his own unrivalled insights to this in-depth study of how it actually works on stage. Sections include an introduction about the creation of the play, a discussion of its action moment by moment, the historical context, the characters and how the production was rehearsed and designed for its original production. The result is an invaluable and authoritative guide for anyone studying, teaching or performing the play.
Max Stafford-Clark continues to be one of the most influential directors of his generation. He established Joint Stock in 1974, ran the Royal Court Theatre from 1979 to 1993, and then set up the extremely successful touring theatre company, Out of Joint, which he ran until he retired from the company in 2017. He is the author of Letters to George, a rehearsal journal about his own staging of The Recruiting Officer, and Taking Stock.
Maeve McKeown is the former Administrator and Education Manager of Out of Joint.