Our Country's Good - Softcover

Wertenbaker, Timberlake

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871293420 ISBN 13: 9780871293428

Publisher: Dramatic Pub Co, 1998

Synopsis

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, and one leading lady who may be about to be hanged, conditions are hardly ideal...Winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988, and many other major awards, Our Country's Good premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1988 and opened on Broadway in 1991. 'Rarely has the redemptive, transcendental power of theatre been argued with such eloquence and passion.' Georgina Brown, Independent Methuen Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. As well as the complete text of the play itself, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of the various interpretations; and notes on individual words and phrases in the text.

About this title

Review

Wertenbaker has searched history and found in it a humanistic lesson for hard modern times: rough, sombre, undogmatic and warm. * Sunday Times * Rarely has the redemptive, transcendental power of theatre been argued with such eloquence and passion * Independent * Highly theatrical, often funny and at times dark and disturbing, it sets an infant civilization on the stage with clarity, economy and insight * Daily Telegraph * infinitely resonant . . . a beautiful play. * Daily Express * Timberlake Wertenbaker's play is a modern classic. . . . a remarkable celebration of theatre's potential to regenerate lost souls. * Evening Standard * Wertenbaker's play . . . shows the regenerative power of drama . . . the heart of Wertenbaker's play lies in its endlessly topical debate about crime and punishment, and in its moving portrait of drama as a means of giving voice, purpose and a sense of communality to a group of social outcasts. . . . a landmark play. * Guardian * Timberlake Wertenbaker's play remains an important piece of work, a love letter to the theatre laced with an anger against those who try to curb its transformative powers. . . . a rhetorically pugnacious play. * Daily Telegraph * Wertenbaker's play has become a humanist classic * Observer * an optimistic ode to the redemptive power of theatre * Financial Times * Our Country's Good is at once a vivid portrait of conditions in the new colony . . . and a richly comic repository of 18th century performance styles. Above all, it is a glorious testament to the healing power of art. * Sunday Express * Timberlake Wertenbaker's rich, remarkable 1988 drama about the redemptive power of theatre . . . a play that leaves the audience, like the characters, transported . . . unashamedly idealistic * Mail on Sunday *

About the Author

Timberlake Wertenbaker was born in France and was Resident Writer for Shared Experience in 1983 and the Royal Court Theatre 1984-85. She is best known for her play Our Country's Good (1988), based on the novel The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally. First performed at the Royal Court in 1988, it was awarded the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play and was nominated for six Tony Awards. Other plays include The Love of the Nightingale (1989), Three Birds Alighting on a Field (1992), The Line (2009) and Jefferson's Garden (2015) for which she won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Play 2016.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dramatic Pub Co
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0871293420
• ISBN 13: 9780871293428
• Binding: Paperback