Our Country's Good

Evening Standard“There are fine performances throughout this nimble revival...” Wertenbaker’s writing feels trenchant and satisfyingly fresh. She makes a lucid case for the invigorating, even therapeutic powers of theatre. The result is a politically charged piece, and a hopeful one...

Financial Times“A modern masterpiece, lovingly revived...” This is a playful but profound piece of theatre: didactic, yet complex; angry, yet charged with hope. It brilliantly matches style to content by requiring a versatile ensemble to play multiple roles...

Whatsonstage.com“It's simply one of the best plays of the past 50 years...” The play is simple yet many-layered and resonant, historical and modern, gritty and theatrical, didactic and emotionally engaging. At times it seems as though written in blocks, but the blocks begin to merge...

The Telegraph“Moving celebration of the power of drama to change lives for the good...” The power of the story, based on Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker, constantly grips, and almost all the performances have dramatic bite and depth...

The Independent“Wertenbaker's play is unashamedly idealistic but it's not sentimental...” Max Stafford-Clark, its original director, has mounted this glowingly persuasive and beautifully cast revival in a new era of swingeing, lamentably short-sighted cuts. His company, Out of Joint, had 25% of its subsidy slashed in 2011...

Guardian“Timberlake Wertenbaker's play remains terrifyingly relevant...” Based on Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker... Its real theme, the regenerative power of drama, seems more urgent than ever at a time of funding cuts and the exclusion of the arts from the proposed English baccalaureate...

The Arts Desk“Stafford-Clark’s sterling production is warm, appealing and light...” Just as a quarter of a century ago the play felt like a protest against the moronic anti-arts prejudices of the Thatcher gang, so today it once again asserts the power of theatre as against the crippled vision of Arts Council cuts...