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The Art is in the History
A review of Our Country's Good
Aboriginal Australians look at their lives as the re-enactment of the journeys and quests taken by ancestor heroes in the Tjukurapa, the Dreamtime, the time before which the earth did not exist. And yet it took less than 75 years of colonization to wipe out most of the people who had occupied the Australian continent for over 40,000 years. The hardships faced by their ancestors could not have prepared them for the boatloads of disease and destruction that landed at Botany Bay in 1788.
In the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III (1787), the British Government sent a fleet to colonize Australia. Eleven ships, carrying supplies and almost 1,500 officers, seamen, marines, and convicts, traveled for eight months before reaching New South Wales. Few of the convicts on board were dangerous criminals. Contrary to popular belief, of the 76 convicts shipped out in 1787, not one was convicted of murder or rape, although more than a hundred had been convicted of thefts in which violence or threat had played some part. Also no woman on the First Fleet had been transported for prostitution, as it was not a transportable offense in this day. Over half the women were domestic servants by trade. The vast majority had been convicted of a minor theft. The penalties were severe - generally death by public hanging. Most of the First Fleet convicts had been found guilty of stealing, been sentenced to hang, and then had their sentence commuted to seven years transportation, with the understanding that this was essentially exile for life.
Our Country's Good, by Timberlake Wertenbaker,is based on the novel The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally (also the author of Schindlers List), which uses as it's source the letters and journals of Ralph Clark, Watkin Tench, David Collins, and other First Fleet officers. The characters in this play - convict and officer alike - did indeed exist. The 178 convict production of Farquhars The Recruiting Officer, directed by nd Lieutenant Ralph Clark, is a matter of historical record. But it is more than that. By the accounts of these First Fleet officers, it is a remarkable tale of the power that theatre has to transform and humanize - even those whom society considers unredeemable. The severe adversity Ralph and his cast of convicts overcame to realize the first Australian production of a play is an interesting chapter in the history of this dawning nation.
Our Countrys Good is a script that comes with some fairly daunting issues that the director, designers and company must deal with. A production must avoid the play becoming little more than just a series of small, isolated scenes.To avoid allowing the switches of scene or character to become too focal, and distract the audience from the situation and the story the script presents and the power in it.But its more important to keep the audience focusing on the power of the script, and its attention to the human pain, and potential, involved in the near-hopeless situation of this world.
And it is the technical precision of the production that allows the show to truly work the script never tries to hide the fact that this is theater about theatre.And this theme is clearly and brilliantly executed in this production and is able to work so well because of the commitment of every technical aspect of this show is design in this way.From the Scenic Design by Curtis Trout, which is clearly the deck of a ship, even though only 8 minutes of the show are supposed to happen on the ships, and the way that the flooring is raked in a different direction then the planking runs, creating a slightly unnerving sense of distortion.The lighting design, designed by Trout and junior Noreen Snyder, which includes a set of slides projecting the titles of each of the scenes onto the center of the stage floor gives a similar effect of distortion.The only complete blackouts in the show happen at the end of the two acts which causing the audience to see the actors moving about onstage in preparation for the scene that is about to begin, and break the illusion of truly contained scenes.But I think the most succinct presentation of this theme is in the costumes, designed by Jenilee Houghton, which never try and hide that the actor wearing them is really playing both the role of convict and officer. She is able to do this by layering the costumes literally on top of one anotherintending elements to be recognized and noticed from the apposing character (for example Dabby Bryant's skirt is meant to be completely obvious as she is playing Capt. Tench).
But the real, central strength of this show, the element that carries your attention, is the triumphant ensemble playing.This cast is the epitome of what a good ensemble cast should beeach with roles that are weighty and powerful, but never allowing one to become to dominate in the whole of the play.This concept was emphasized by the fact that director, Sara Freeman, opens and closes the play with the same image, the entire company together presentedno one gets a individual bow, everything is for the good of the ensemble.There was also never an instant when you thought anybody didnt know exactly what their character was doing, and why, and how it fit into the picture of the play.There was never a doubt for an instant, from the moment when the haunting preliminary music took us to Australia, that this was a story worth telling, and one being told by people who believed it worth telling, and thought they could affect us by telling it.
This true story is fascinating in itself, but the play is able to expound the meaning of this incident to become a celebration of the transformational power of the theatre both for the actors and the audience. Theatre can overcome determinist views of character and class by displaying the multiple possibilities of character within each person and revealing social behavior as itself a form of acting. The play avoids the sentimentality of this optimistic notion by simultaneously showing how ingrained the opposition to it is and how hard Clark and the convicts worked to receive it.The very structure of the play reinforces its theme of transformation, in that eleven actors play at least two very distinct roles, this can cause the audience to question how these characters are different.How is it that one body can so easily be both convict and officer?And what is it that makes a person a convict or a criminal, their background or their breading?
Our Country's Good is not a show that will allow you to just sit back and watchit is a show that you must pay-attention too, and think about.But this is a production, that won't leave you disappointed. The real Ralph Clark one wrote in his journal this advice that he had given to the convicts-players after a particularly savage beating, I ask you to keep in mind the play, to cling to the play as the thing which will give you your spirit back" And this production is able to accomplish this lofty ideal.
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