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About the play:
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Those
of you who saw or were involved in “Our Country’s Good” will already
have some familiarity with Farquhar’s comedy, as this is the play the
convicts decide to put on and perform for the community in Sydney.
Farquhar’s
play, set in Shrewsbury in the early years of the eighteenth century,
is at the very end of the period we know as Restoration comedy and
tells of the attempts of Captain Plume and his resourceful assistant
Sergeant Kite to drum up recruits for the War of the Spanish Succession
(think Marlborough). The Captain, however, is equally involved in his
attempts to gain the hand of Silvia, daughter of local magistrate
Justice Balance and the attempts of his friend, Mr Worthy, to secure
the hand of Silvia’s cousin Melinda, who is also being pursued by the
inimitable Captain Brazen. Matters are complicated by Captain Plume’s
inability to resist a pretty face and made even more confusing when
Silvia, to test him out, disguises herself as Jack Wilful and attempts
to become a recruit herself. Add in general bawdiness, drunkenness,
some highly dubious fortune-telling and some slightly challenged
country folk and you have all the ingredients of a very entertaining
comedy.
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