Our Country's Good

At a time when theatres are losing their subsidies, and Dorset libraries are going to the wall, it’s vital to remember the restorative, even redemptive power that language and the arts can have. Even the lunks who terrified the deported convicts realised that. At least, they do in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play Our Country’s Good, in which redcoats can be brutal, civilising or something in between.

This makes it a wonderful ensemble piece, and the Senior School Play took every opportunity to show these characteristics through smartly-drawn characters. With the good angels were Alex Warren (U6g) as the far-sighted captain and Harry Gibbs (L6m) as a second lieutenant, impatient for promotion but patient with a cast of thieves. Patrick Reynolds (L6c) was the menacing alternative – a ghoulish and sarcastic Scot with no time for art therapy. In between was the utterly compelling Ben Dickins (U6c), possessed by the ghost of a man he’d had hanged. Their victims were realised with full pathos, with Milo Clesham (5f) as an autodidact who’d mastered the one half of a dictionary he’d read, and women with no escape from the roles life handed them, until given roles in a comedy by George Farquhar.

The audience left Ian Reade’s production elated by the performances, if more aware of how such an act still needs protecting.

Tom Payne