Forget six of the best, it’s 100 lashes for the convict deemed guilty of some comparatively minor misdemeanour. The year is 1789, and the country Australia. In Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, the remarkably enlightened Captain Arthur Phillip decides the way to redemption for some convicts is not corporal punishment. Instead, they should take part in a play. Our Country’s Good was commissioned by Max Stafford-Clark, and as the play approaches its 25th birthday, he has returned to it with his Out of Joint theatre company. Stafford-Clark is one of the most distinguished and long-serving directors in the business, and uses his own rehearsal room experience – I suspect – to often hilarious effect as callow Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark battles to put together a production of The Recruiting Officer. Hissy fits, rows over who is upstaging whom, attempts to rewrite the script, they’re all there. “I can’t do my entrance without my handkerchief,” wails one actor.

But underneath the laughter, Stafford-Clark makes a point with trademark clarity: the fledgling actors are indeed taken out of themselves by the process, and the play has become more important than their risk of starvation if a supply ship doesn’t arrive soon.

Stafford-Clark’s skill also shows in his use of doubling. It’s impossible to tell the same actor is playing a sneering officer one minute, a convict the next. It’s a shock to see only ten actors at curtain call. If there has to be a stand-out, it’s Dominic Thorburn as director Clark – his resolve never falters, even when a member of his cast is carted off for summary execution.

FOUR STARS