Max Stafford-Clark talks to Duncan Hall about coming back to his play, 25 years on

 

Our Country’s Good
Theatre Royal Brighton,

New Road, Tuesday,

November 11 to Saturday, November 15

FORMER Royal Court director Max Stafford-Clark was in New York, presiding over the disastrous Broadway transfer of Caryl Churchill’s West End hit satire Serious Money in 1987 when he first came across Thomas Keneally’s book The Playmaker.

“We’d had Black Monday in which people had lost a lot of money on the stock market,” remembers Stafford-Clark. “Finances were no longer a laughing matter. The play was previewing and clearly doomed – and the Broadway contract prevented me from rehearsing for more than an hour and a half every day so the play wasn’t getting much better.”

With time on his hands he started looking through the novels in Manhattan’s big Barnes And Noble bookshop. And when he picked up Schindler’s Ark writer Keneally’s true story of 18th century transported convicts putting on George Farquhar’s Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer in their new Australian home with the help of one of the officers in charge he was smitten.

“I had to restrict myself to 50 pages a day otherwise I would have read it all in one go,” he says.

On his return home he decided to produce a double bill in rep, of The Recruiting Officer and a stage version of The Playmaker, which became Our Country’s Good.

Now 25 years on he is returning to the play, which was adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker.

“The play is now on the schools’ syllabus,” he says. “A whole generation of kids have studied the play but never seen it. It has been terrific fun to revisit.”

At the heart of the story is the power of theatre to bring people together and create a humanising force.

“This is why theatre is worth subsidising,” says Stafford-Clark. “The debate in this country about how we live our lives is conducted in the theatre.

“Osborne and Cameron have done more harm in three years to the infrastructure of theatre than Thatcher did in three terms. The rolling back of the welfare state and the cuts to theatre make this an apposite story.”

The transportation of criminals in the 18th and 19th centuries came about because of a belief that there was a criminal class.

“All we had to do was transport the criminal class and there would be no more crime,” laughs Stafford-Clark. “The problem would be over!”

The play also examines the culture clash between the prisoners and the soldiers sent to guard them – many of whom were from the aristocratic class.

“They had no experience whatsoever,” says Stafford-Clark. “Poor Ralph Clark [the second lieutenant who gets behind the play] is terrified by the women convicts – he has never met a woman like that before.”

The majority of the cast double, or sometimes treble up, taking on roles as both prisoners and guards.

Although this is a revival Stafford-Clark is still a champion of new theatre, having directed Richard Bean’s new historical play Pitcairn earlier this year. Set on a remote island, it saw the crewmen and officers of the Bounty trying to establish their own utopia following the infamous mutiny.

Pitcairn premiered at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre and is currently at Eastbourne’s Devonshire Park Theatre as part of a national tour.

“If Fletcher Christian had set sail for Sydney Cove he would have arrived in time for the convicts’ Recruiting Officer,” says Stafford-Clark. “The mutiny was on April 29, and the performance of the play was on June 4 – he would have made it to Sydney in four weeks with favourable winds.”

Now Stafford-Clark and his company Out Of Joint Theatre is focusing on a contemporary production by Robin Soans, due to premiere in January.

Crouch Hold Pause Engage is based on the true stories of Welsh rugby international Gareth Thomas and the 2006 wave of teenage suicides in his home town of Bridgend.

“They were wrongly attributed to an internet cult,” says Stafford-Clark. “The play is about escaping a small town. I think there are towns that have a third generation of unemployment, which are hard to regenerate. Someone like Gareth is an inspiration – how he got out and became an iconic figure.

“I don’t think the appetite for new plays has diminished in the part of the audience – I think the willingness and ability to take a chance is reduced for theatre managers and directors.

“It is increasingly difficult to take those decisions and renew the art form. Grassroots organisations are the ones most likely to do new work and give new writers a chance - and they are the most vulnerable.”

ESSENTIAL INFORMATION: Starts 7.45pm, 2.30pm matinees Thurs and Sat, tickets from £10. Call 08448 717650