NADIA Fall will direct Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, a Travelex £15 Tickets production, which opens in the Olivier Theatre on August 26 (previews from August 19) before continuing in repertoire until October 17, 2015.

Observed by a lone, mystified Aboriginal Australian, the first convict ship arrives in Botany Bay in 1788, crammed with England’s outcasts. Colony discipline in this vast and alien land is brutal. Three proposed public hangings incite an argument: how best to keep the criminals in line – the noose or a more civilised form of entertainment?

The ambitious Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark steps forward with a play. But as the mostly illiterate cast rehearses, and a sense of common purpose begins to take hold, the young officer’s own transformation is as marked and poignant as that of his prisoners.

A profoundly humane piece of theatre, steeped in suffering yet charged with hope, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Olivier Award-winning play celebrates the redemptive power of art.

Timberlake Wertenbaker is the writer and translater of over 40 plays, including The Grace of Mary Traverse, The Love of the Nightingale, Three Birds Alighting on a Field, The Break of Day, After Darwin and The Ant and the Cicada.

Nadia Fall’s productions for the National Theatre include Dara, Home, The Doctor’s Dilemma, Chewing Gum Dreams and Hymn. Her work elsewhere includes Hobson’s Choice (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), Disgraced (Bush Theatre), and a forthcoming production of Ayckbourn’s Way Upstream at Chichester.

Our Country’s Good will be designed by Peter McKintosh, with lighting by Neil Austin, choreography by Arthur Pita and sound by Carolyn Downing. Casting has still to be announced.

Thanks to its partnership with Travelex, this year the National Theatre is once again offering over 100,000 tickets at just £15 for four productions (Everyman, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, The Beaux’ Stratagem and Our Country’s Good), with the rest at £25 and £35.

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