By Emi L, Year 12

On September 18th, Years 10 to 13 travelled to The Lyric, Hammersmith, to watch ‘Our Country’s Good’. Directed by Rachel O’Riordan, the play explores the lives of the convicts and naval officers sent to Australia in the late 18th century, and how their activities affected the aboriginals. One of my favourite aspects of the play was the set, as I felt it gave an accurate portrayal of how the British slowly ruined the land. Originally the set was scattered with bare trees, but as the second act came to be, we saw the set go from slightly littered with beer cans, to plastic chairs and bags covering the little remaining trees after most were cut down. The shape of the set also intrigued me, as the set was designed to slope from upstage to nearly all the way down to the audience. I have never seen a set like this before in a play, so I was curious as to how the actors were going to traverse it. As well as the set, I was inspired by the use of lighting to define spaces and illustrate different times in the day and locations. Overall, I massively enjoyed the play as it gave me insight into a topic in history that I previously had little knowledge of, through the use of compelling acting and their use of integrating contemporary props.

By Ruby A , Year 12

I thought ‘Our Country’s good’ was really good and found the set to be interesting. It was a layered, sandy platform with trees scattered about, which created a way for the actors to show the hierarchy with the layers created by the set. As well as this, the trees that were in the background slowly got chopped down to show how the troops and the convicts were slowly destroying the land, much to the local people’s dismay. The acting from the actors on stage was incredible and suspense-building. Within the play, one of the officers of the royal navy puts on a play with the convicts to try and boost morale. This idea of watching a play within a play was very interesting as I was able to see how theatre positively affects those even in the 18th century. Overall, I really enjoyed watching this play and found it incredibly useful for my studies to be able to compare and contrast similar plays.