The Recruiting Officer

"A play is a world in itself, a tiny colony we could almost say.
And you are in charge of it. That is a great responsibility."

Australia 1789. Eight months by ship from England, the British penal colony at Sydney is struggling to find its way. In a new world that resists all the rules of the Old World, a young lieutenant sets out to direct the first antipodean theatrical production – George Farquhar’s Restoration comedy, The Recruiting Officer. But with only two copies of the play and a (mostly illiterate) cast of convicts, the conditions are hardly ideal. Even better? His leading lady is bound for the gallows.