Stage Door News
Stage Door News
[Mississauga ON, February 2012] Theatre Erindale’s record-setting “Power of Performance” Anniversary Season continues with one of the most influential comedy-dramas of the late twentieth century. Timberlake Wertenbaker’s award-winning Our Country’s Good is the true story of the first play ever mounted in Australia – against impossible odds. It opens this week at the Erindale Studio Theatre and plays from February 9th to 19th for nine performances only.
The brilliant source novel by Thomas Keneally – author of Schindler’s List and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith – was based on fact. On Thursday June 4th, 1789, in honour of the birthday of King George III, a group of convicts mounted a production of George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer in the newly-founded Penal Colony at Sydney Cove, in the unexplored continent of Australia. While every one of Keneally’s characters actually existed in history, some of the documents relating to this event have mysteriously disappeared. Keneally’s inspiration was to freely imagine what could have happened, given the evidence at hand.
The Royal Court Theatre in England then commissioned an adaptation from provocative playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, and she and the original company re-imagined the story in their own way, even conducting research in British prisons. The moving and sometimes hilarious result won the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play, was nominated for six Tonies, took the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play, and has been produced around the world in multiple languages. What these convicts accomplished under threat of starvation as well as the lash and the noose was hailed by the Sunday Times as “one of the best plays of the 1980s,” and by The Guardian as “a triumph … a tribute to the transforming power of drama.”
Director Patrick Young, who also designed the set, is the founding Artistic Director of Theatre Erindale. He says that “working on this amazing text has been an adventure and a privilege.” This production will preserve most of the doubling around which Wertenbaker constructed her work. Thus ten of the eleven cast-members play both an officer and a convict, regardless of gender, and most of the necessary costume changes are performed onstage.
The company warns of adult content and occasional coarse language. But don’t wait to make reservations – Theatre Erindale’s last two productions set new attendance records and sold out all but one or two performances! Our Country’s Good previews February 9, opens February 10, and runs February 11 and 16-19 in the intimate state-of-the-art Erindale Studio Theatre on the campus of the University of Toronto Mississauga. Tickets are still only $15.00 – just $10.00 for students and seniors. Curtain time Thursdays is 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays 8PM, with 2PM matinees Saturdays and on Sunday the 19th (please note that latecomers cannot be admitted to this production). On Thursdays use the CCT Garage accessed from the South end of campus, for other performances use Lot 1 at the North end. Parking is $6.00. For tickets and information or to receive a free colour brochure, call the Box Office at 905-569-4369 or visit www.theatreerindale.com.
2012-02-05
Mississauga: Theatre Erindale presents “Our Country’s Good” February 9-19