STAGE REVIEW : Ups and Downs With ‘Our Country’s Good’

“Our Country’s Good,” a story of convicts on a prison ship in Australia in 1789 who are forced by English officers to perform a play, received raves in London and snubs in Los Angeles.

One can appreciate the polarity of the earlier responses to this Timberlake Wertenbaker play in the new UC San Diego production directed by Andrei Serban.

It’s hard for a believer in theater not to rave about a play that believes so passionately in the stage’s power to transform. Give a completely degraded, demoralized and semi-depraved cast of characters a chance to be other people, nicer people, kinder and better-treated people--even if only within the limits of a script--and sea changes are bound to result.

But, when things are “bound to” result, a certain amount of tedium is also likely to happen. Especially when the inevitable takes about three hours to unravel.

One of the strengths of Serban’s direction is the trust he places in his student actors to shine. They do just that, commanding not only the stage, but the entire space they prance around in--from the orchestra seats, to the back of the hall to the grid hanging overhead.

One of the more brilliant parts of the show lies in the double and sometimes triple casting. It emphasizes the versatility of these performers and underscores the point that we are dealing with the same human clay, whether outfitted in officers’ uniforms or convicts’ rags.

Interesting parallel casting has Captain Arthur Phillip (who authorizes the staging of the play-within-the-play as a way of raising the convicts’ humanity) performed by the same actor, Danny Burstein, who also plays John Wisehammer, one of the few literate convicts, who loves the power of words.

Major Robbie Ross, who believes the play undercuts his brutal rule, is viciously portrayed by Donald S. Mackay, who also gives us Ketch Freeman, the cowardly convict who turns hangman to save his own skin.

Midshipman Harry Brewer is played with frenzied desperation by Kevin Connell, who later delivers John Arscott, a tough convict with scars of lashes on his back.

The entire cast is terrific, but the script fails the actors in an unforeseen way: Despite its three-hour running time, Wertenbaker provides virtually no scenes of emotional transition.

Lt. Clark detests the convicts in one scene, fights for them in the next. Without explanation for the change of heart. Major Ross hates the play, and is the stock enemy of the enterprise, but we never have that crucial scene in which we find out why he does what he does.

The play’s cinematic format provides a field day for the design team, however, and it rises to the challenge. Tom Mays’ sets keep surprising and delighting like good plot twists. The solid hull of a ship, jutting out onto the stage, suddenly pulls apart to reveal human agonies below deck. A long stretch of sand and bleached wood becomes a place in which Brewer builds castles of desire and despair.

Diane Boomer’s lighting brings a level of surreality into play: ghostly faces emerge from the darkness; we are in a world of halos and shadows, of glaring redness on a convict’s flogged back and soft focus on another’s face, as she begins to dare to love. Jack Taggart’s costumes for the convicts look authentically scratchy. Lawrence Czoka’s sound design makes every whisper audible.

“Our Country’s Good” shows no shortage of ideas, albeit in rough form, which makes it all the more frustrating: Officers preferring the theater of hanging (as a way of keeping convicts in line through fear) to the theater of manners (giving them a stake in civilization by making them a part of it). And what about the Australian aborigine who tells herself that these Englishmen, convicts and all, are a dream, only to find out that the “dream” has given her smallpox?

Serban said he might want to take this play back to his native Romania as a cautionary tale about “freedom and lack of freedom.” But first it needs another rewrite. What “Our Country’s Good” is now, is a showcase for a writer’s ideas, actors’ versatility, a director’s imagination and a sampling from the designers’ broad palettes.

At the Mandell Weiss Theatre in La Jolla, nightly, 8 p.m. through Saturday; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Sunday. $6-$10; (619) 534-4574.