On 25th September, A level students made the short journey to the Hammersmith Lyric trip for a performance of Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good.

“Spewed from our country, forgotten, bound to the dark edge of the earth…”

The opening of Our Country’s Good parallels Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a storm rages across a prison ship bound for the first penal colony in Australia. The brutal sound of flesh being whipped emanates from a centralised figure with other despairing female silhouettes crying out in hunger and moaning about their treatment and appalling abuse suffered on the ship. We find out that Thomas Barrett, aged 17 is being incarcerated for seven years for stealing a sheep, whereas Dorothy Handland, aged 82, is castaway for stealing a biscuit (and later commits suicide).

We all praised the set which evoked a sloping barren and dry land with real trees and the sound of cicadas. Once on land, the dichotomy between the prisoners and their captors was brought to life by the sweltering and dishevelled uniformed officers who discuss the morality of punishment. One of them, Captain Philip who is in charge of the colony, advocates a more tolerant view believing in rehabilitation and champions a younger (and ambitious) officer; second Lieutenant Ralph to direct a play among the prisoners as an experiment. This is severely ridiculed by Captain Ross and his drunken sidekick Tench who try to sabotage the play at every turn. There is a particularly affecting moment when Liz (under Captain Ross’ command) is humiliated and ordered to bark like a dog. In the same scene, another prisoner (Sideway), has his shirt torn off to reveal horrific scarring as the prisoners are de-humanised as the expense of their captors.

This dichotomy was challenged by the officers conducting illicit relationships with the characters, both aboard the ship and in Australia; though the power dynamic was never really forgotten. We found the way the relationship between Officer Harry and prisoner ‘Duckling’ was played sensitively by the actors which ignited questions about whether Duckling could ever be truly free to love as well as the theme of guilt as Harry descends into insanity as he visualises a hanged man who has come back to haunt him. The overbearing presence of the female Aboriginal character who narrated the effects the colonisers had on the country (amplified by using indigenous language), such as transporting savage diseases, was a stark reminder of the reckless behaviour of the colonialists.

You may think there is little room for humour in such a bleak setting, though we found ourselves laughing; characters such as Meg and Liz toy with the officers. The women were bound together by a prisoner code of conduct; protecting others is at the forefront, which led Liz dangerously close to death for not speaking the truth. Many of the characters are based on real life individuals such as Mary Bryant who was one of the first escapees from the colony.

Wertenbaker developed the script in 1988, touring many prisons and shaping a correspondence with many prisoners who then performed the play. She felt keenly, through her own experience, the redemptive power of theatre; to unify and educate. The play has aged well for our time. Wertenbaker wrote Our Country’s Good under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership to protest funding cuts that were at their height. We face the same dilemma and we pondered on, not only the power of theatre to entertain, but to inform and change the paradigm too.