Our Country’s Good

Lyric Hammersmith, 09/09/24

Credit: Marc Brenner

Final rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Lyric’s reimagining of a play first written in 1988 is a bold one. With a run time of 165 minutes (plus an interval), it’s not for the faint hearted. Luckily, director Rachel O’Riordan gets the most out of the characters with a particularly sharp cast, whilst the set design of Gary McCann places the action very unmistakingly in a barren Australian outback. Timberlake Wertenbaker’s story takes us to a penal colony, where English officers ponder the idea of using theatre as a rehabilitative force, where captors and convicts unite to perform a restoration comedy known as ‘The Playmaker’. So it all gets a bit meta by the end, and that in itself is one of the play’s weaknesses.

The company are very good. Particular standouts include Simon Manyonda as Lieutenant Clarke – the one pushing for the play to take place, Finbar Lynch as Major Ross – the one pushing for the play to be scrapped, Ruby Bentall – who played the petrified convict Mary superbly but also the most scarily accurate depiction of an 18th century Reverend I’ve ever seen, and Jack Bardoe – who flicks between a desperate Harry who is haunted by the man he had hanged, and a menacing Captain Campbell who intimidates the convicts.

The production was fairly sound and music light too, relying on the engrossing nature of the dialogue and also the captivating use of the steeped set. Apart from a couple of unsettling scenes of whipping.

A character in the original script, known as Aborigine, is modernised (which is perhaps due to the ‘First Nations cultural consultant’ being a part of the production team). It is renamed as Killara, who comes on stage at mostly random intervals and recites poetry or commentary on how the original inhabitants were at one with their land and how the natural order of the habitat is being disturbed. It feels controversial to say, but unfortunately it felt as though this served no purpose at all other than the production felt obliged to do it and give some acknowledgement to its post-colonial staging, and the performer – known as Naarah – offered very little in their brief moments on stage.

While the storytelling is mostly good, the action itself does feel at times like a collection of individual stories being construed around the play-within-the-play conceit. These stories are left unresolved or – at best – muddy, by the end. And sadly, the play ends with the curtain going up and not a lot else happening – I left wondering if I missed something, as the overall story was left without anywhere else to go.

That said, the acting was strong, and I did find myself enjoying large parts of the show despite its length – which was something I was dreading heading in. The play leaves you with some interesting questions about rehabilitation, class, and the ‘redeeming power of the theatre’, although it doesn’t do a great job at answering any of the questions it poses. Still, for a £10 ticket – to get to see so much theatre acted to a high standard – I can’t complain about that.