Issues of Identity, Nationality, and Performance: the Reception of Two Plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker

Abstract

This paper explores some of the many factors which affect the way in which the critical response to a production is made manifest. Using the reception of Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love of the Nightingale and Our Country's Good as case studies, Susan Carlson contrasts the enthusiastic response to the first production of the latter play at the Royal Court, where its supposed celebration of the redemptive effects of theatricality were widely acclaimed, with the subjection of the former to the ‘atavistic guilts of male theatre reviewers’. Examining the reception of later productions – and even the West End transfer – of Our Country's Good, she proceeds to show how different theatres, companies, and senses of cultural, sexual, and national identity shaped ever-changing attitudes towards what was presumed to be the same play. Susan Carlson, whose article ‘Comic Collisions: Convention, Rage, and Order’ appeared in NTQ12 (November 1987), is Professor of English at lowa State University, and the author of Women of Grace: James's Plays and the Comedy of Manners (1985) and Women and Comedy: Rewriting the British Theatrical Tradition (1991). She is now working on issues of performance and collaboration in contemporary theatre, and writing about the work of the Omaha Magic Theatre and the playwriting of Karim Alrawi.

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