Our Country's Good

directed by Ron Ritchell at the Lyric Stage

Through May 24

It might seem a little frivolous, not to mention laughable, to expect people to come and see a play about the redeeming power of art in this day and age. Who could possibly believe that the weak, the twisted and the bitter could really be brought back into the fold of civilization just by acting out a play? Timberlake Wertenbaker, author of Our Country's Good, currently playing at the Lyric Stage, certainly thinks so.

Based on The Playmaker, a recent novel by Thomas Keneally which in turn is based on events which took place in Australia in 1789, Wertenbaker's play focuses on a convict colony in Sydney.

She manages to avoid the patent lack of profundity inherent in the work of Keneally (who also wrote novels such as Cut Rate Kingdom and Gossip from the Forest), creating a multi-layered play which deals with issues that are very much important today. Within the confines of the time frame, Wertenbaker discusses the criminal character (is it habit or "innate tendency"?); the importance of art (is it "an expression of civilization" or a waste of time?); and patriotism (should these new immigrants try to "remember England" or transfer their allegiance to the "iniquitous shore" of Australia?)

Wertenbaker rarely stoops to the cliches that abound in the Australian productions, platitudes which are generally crafted for American consumption. For good measure, the audience is favored with a gratuitous glimpse of the Aborigine as a Noble Savage, revealed in appropriately lyrical phraseology: "A giant canoe drifts on the sea, clouds billowing from upright oars. This is a dream which has lost its way." Despite such instances of garish scriptwriting, Our Country's Good succeeds in being a masterpiece of realism.

The Lyric Stage's production may not have quite as much polish as you could wish for, but the spirited acting and the barren stage lend themselves to a certain charm. The play is acted out against Joe levendusky's economical stage design of four gum trees and an anonymous white mass that might be an anthill or a ship's sail.

The casting follows the plan adopted by the director of the original production at the Royal Court Theatre in London, with each actor playing two roles--an officer and a convict.

The differentiation between the double roles relies largely on the costumes. The convicts are, of course, dressed in the requisite rags, but the officers are dressed a little too lushly--they wear red velvet trimmed with brass, white knee-breeches, white wigs and hats. In their eagerness to heighten the contrast between the status of the convicts and their masters, the designers have overstepped the boundary between verisimilitude and fantasy.

Ron Ritchell's direction sags a little until the convicts' play--George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer--finally gets under way. In any case, Ritchell has not tried any radical approach to the play, opting instead for an almost literal adherence to the stage directions in Wertenbaker's script, and the result is a striking if somewhat conventional, interpretation.

Among the actors, Charles Weinstein stands out for his ebullient portrayal of Robert Sideway, the convicted pickpocket who dreams of Drury Lane. With his absurd Tragedian posturing--he imagines himself to be a second Garrick--and the flourishes of his beloved white handkerchief (that indispensable possession of the true gentleman), he becomes the star, not only of The Recruiting Officer, but also of Our Country's Good.

Midshipman Harry Brewer, played by Larry Bramire, is also fascinating as a man tortured by his conscience and by the ghosts of the dead, as is Chloe Leamon's Dabby Bryant--a woman with a will to live--and Sheila Ferrini's embittered Liz Morden, a convict with the shadow of the gallows upon her.

Robert J. Bouffier, playing John Wisehammer, a convict fascinated by the power of words, also deserves attention. He frequently quotes from Johnson's Dictionary: "abject: a man without hope" and has secret hopes of becoming a playwright. In fact, Wertenbaker makes him the voice for the words which name this play: "True patriots we, for be it understood/We left our country for our country's good." (Incidentally, these lines are generally attributed to George Barrington, but nevermind.)

Unfortunately, David Gutmann is less real as second lieutenant Ralph Clark, a self-righteous stick of a man who reforms and is made human by the play which he directs. Gutmann is not convincing as the man who used to kiss the portrait of his wife a thousand times before he went to bed, and declared: "I'm not a convict. I don't sin"--nor is he as the man who has an adulterous affair with a pretty convict.

But ultimately, the Lyric Stage creates a triumphant production, more than worth your while, which proves that art can actually show a "wicked" man that "there is more to life than crime and punishment."