Our Country's Good

Our Country's Good is the story of convicts and Royal Marines sent to Australia in the late 1780s as part of the first penal colony there. It follows Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark's attempts to put on a production of George Farquhar's restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer with a cast of male and female convicts. The play shows the class system in the convict camp and discusses themes such as sexuality, punishment, the Georgian judicial system, and the idea that art can act as an ennobling force.
As part of their research, Stafford-Clark and Wertenbaker went to see a play performed by convicts at Wormwood Scrubs, which proved very inspiring: "…in prison conditions, theatre can be hugely heartening and influential and indeed in prison your options are so limited you can become a born-again Christian, a gym-queen constantly working out, a bird watcher or you become passionate about theatre.”

Most of the characters in the play are based on real people who sailed with the First Fleet, though some have had their names changed. Wertenbaker was able to read the journals of First Fleet members in order to portray them accurately.

A play by Timberlake Wertenbaker directed by Zsuzsi Lindsay at the St Andrews Student Union, St Andrews, in March 2003.