Carlson, Susan. “Language and Identity in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Plays.” In The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights, edited by Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Carlson discusses Wertenbaker’s complex explorations, in several of her major plays, of the interplay between language and the formation of personal identity, particularly as it relates to gender.
Davis, Jim. “Festive Irony: Aspects of British Theatre in the 1980’s.” Critical Survey 3, no. 3 (1991): 339-350. Davis discusses the original production of Our Country’s Good in the context of contemporary British drama. He concludes that the play is an apology for theater as a medium that can empower, liberate, and educate both practitioners and audience.
Dymkowski, Christine. “‘The Play’s the Thing’: The Metatheatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker.” In Drama on Drama: Dimensions of Theatricality on the Contemporary British Stage, edited by Nicole Boireau. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Dymkowski explores Wertenbaker’s use of plays and the discourse of theater within her plays. Major works treated include Our Country’s Good and The Love of the Nightingale.
Rabey, David Ian. “Defining Difference: Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Drama of Language, Dispossession, and Discovery.” Modern Drama 33 (December, 1990): 518-528. Rabey analyzes a range of Wertenbaker’s plays, suggesting that crisis in her work is a consequence of an individual not being able to fit within a defined code and the resulting quest for meaning.
Taylor, Val. “Mothers of Invention: Female Characters in Our Country’s Good and The Playmaker.” Critical Survey 3, no. 3 (1991): 331-338. Taylor compares Thomas Keneally’s depiction of women characters in The Playmaker to Wertenbaker’s representation of them in Our Country’s Good. Concludes that Keneally’s women are created from a paternalistic male perspective, whereas Wertenbaker’s female characters, written from a feminist perspective, subvert the patriarchal representation of women evident in her source text.
Wilson, Ann. “Our Country’s Good: Theatre, Colony, and Nation in Wertenbaker’s Adaptation of The Playmaker.” Modern Drama 34, no. 1 (March, 1991): 23-35. In this comparison of Wertenbaker’s play to its source, Thomas Keneally’s The Playmaker, Wilson argues that in the novel, the personal relationships of the officers with the convicts essentially extend their roles as agents of colonization, whereas in the play, these relationships allow each to recognize the other’s humanity.