21 to 28 July 2007

in the Studio Theatre

Our Country's Good

by Timberlake Wertenbaker

directed by Mark Wilson

The prison governor's hope in giving his Botany Bay convicts a play to perform is to civilise them. But this play is so much more than a story about giving "nasty people nice things to say in order to make them nice". Set in 1789 against a backdrop of the extraordinary clash between European and Aboriginal cultures, the play is about the overwhelming transformation that can come with the acquisition of language -- the facility to communicate our thought, our feeling. That's its huge power and its potential to move, to amuse and to delight.

Review