The Oxford Playhouse's Young Company takes on a theatrical titan this week with their adaptation of Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good. First performed in 1988, the story of a colony of convicts in 18th century Sydney and their attempt to stage a production of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer features both a sprawling cast (in which many roles are doubled), and weighty subject matter, using theatre as a tool to explore each character's essential humanity. We caught up with director Paul Simpson to discuss the legacy of the play and the importance of youth theatre.
Daily Information: Before we begin, could you give us a brief summary of Our Country’s Good for any unfamiliar readers?
Paul Simpson: Our Country's Good is a play about justice. The story takes us to 1780s Australia, with the establishment of penal colonies along the Pacific coastline. We meet characters who on the surface represent the idea of good versus bad - or civilised versus uncivilised - convicts and officers. A cohort of convicts brought to Australia to serve their sentence for crimes committed back in Britain. But our play explores this idea from the start, opening the debate about whether people inherit the instinct to commit crimes, or if given the chance, can they pave a different life for themselves. As such, the Governor of the colony gives one ambitious Lieutenant the opportunity to put on a play, with the convicts as the cast members. It's through this process of putting on a play that we understand the harsh circumstances that each of the convicts has lived through, resulting in their eventual law breaking. Through this process we begin to see the humanity in each of them, as they work together, understanding the values of friendship and family, committing themselves to a common goal. By the end of our play, the audience begins to question whether the officers themselves reprsent injustice - is there an injustice within justice?
DI: Our Country’s Good is obviously a play that covers extremely timely themes - colonisation, racism, abuse of authority, the pitfalls of carceral justice and, of course, the theatrical space as a centre for self-discovery. What in particular drew you to this production?
PS: The thing I love most about staging a play is the feeling of family. It's very much the process that is most important for me - seeing the growth of a group of creatives, as they understand and unpick their characters, with each person in the rehearsal room beginning to relate to the situations and emotions of the narrative. The themes of Our Country's Good, as you say, feel incredibly pertinent today, as we continue to pick apart the legacy of the world of empires. We were able to draw so many parallels between the convicts working together, and our own rehearsal room. Each actor within our own rehearsal room was able to find something familiar and relatable with the stories of each character. And working through this together, as an ensemble, was an incredible part of our journey.
DI: Many young people come across Our Country’s Good as a text for A Level Drama - has working with a younger company affected your approach to the show?
PS: I don't think my approach changes on the basis of the age of a performer. With any play, the text is your initial instruction manual, and although as a director you, of course, create your own version with an element of creative licence, the most important thing is the conversations about the themes and the text, and how we want to include the audience in this discussion.
I think it's wrong to underestimate a person's ability to contribute to a debate - we all have our own mechanism into a conversation, regardless of age, perhaps just with different reference points and examples to draw upon. I'm very proud of my Young Company for everything they brought to our conversations, and most of all, I'm grateful for their commitment to always questioning their characters and relationships. I think this is a brilliant text for study at A Level. It's an interesting part of history - an era of discovery, mixed with a politics of privilege. There's lots to unpick in this.
DI: Given that the narrative revolves so much around the power of theatre, what has the rehearsal process been like?
PS: There are so many similarities between the text and our own process. The Playhouse Young Company is made up of a brilliant, talented cohort of young people, all aged between 17 and 25 years old. This is such a busy time of someone's life - huge periods of transition and discovery. Each member of our Young Company brings their own experiences and references of the world, and their own ambitions and objectives. This is exactly the same as the group of characters in our play. The Young Company are juggling so many commitments in their own lives outside of rehearsal, which I am in complete awe and admiration of. And again, this is the same as in the play - the convicts are being pulled in so many different directions, with their ambitions of feeling understood by putting on the play, whilst of course going through their own individual experiences of punishment. Luckily, the lives of our Young Company are far from identical to the brutal world of 1780s Australia.
DI: Obviously the circumstances are VERY different, but how much does the crew’s staging of the play-within-a-play reflect your own experience working in theatre?
PS: I'm so very grateful to the whole in-house creative team on this project. Getting to work with talented, committed creatives in all departments is a joy, and a genuine privilege. To see the process of each department - set, costume, lighting, sound, stage management - is one of my favourite parts of any process. It’s been such a pleasure working with our in-house creative team that this year we are thrilled to open an exhibition of design work by Immy Howard at The Playhouse. This is an opportunity for audience members (and anybody else who would like to pop in over the next month!) to see an integral piece of our production!
I like to see theatre as a sort of problem-solving process, and seeing everyone's ideas fall into place into the same vision is such an interesting thing. The director, of course, sets a vision, but the added skill, and knowledge, and creativity of the technical and production elements of the show, really is the catalyst to bringing everything alive. And I know for the performers, these elements always help the process step up a whole level.
DI: Describe Our Country’s Good in 5 words.
PS: Thematically, I think my five words would be: Justice. Humanity. Brutality. Circumstance. Chance. However, I'd also like to focus on: Patience. Understanding. Care. Connection. Family.
Our Country's Good runs at the Oxford Playhouse from the 21st-22nd March; find timings and where to book here.