Timberlake Wertenbaker's plays include New Anatomies (ICA, London, 1982), Abel's Sister (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1984), The Grace of Mary Traverse (Royal Court), which won the Plays and Players Most Promising Playwright Award in 1985, Our Country's Good (Royal Court and Broadway), winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988 and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play in 1991, The Love of the Nightingale (RSC's Other Place), which won the 1989 Eileen Anderson Central TV Drama Award, Three Birds Alighting on a Field (Royal Court), which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Writers' Guild Award and London Critics' Circle Award in 1992, The Break of Day (Out of Joint production, Royal Court and tour, 1995), After Darwin (Hampstead Theatre, 1998), The Ash Girl (Birmingham Rep, 2000), Credible Witness (Royal Court, 2001), Galileo's Daughter (Theatre Royal, Bath, 2004), Arden City (NT Connections, 2008), The Line (Arcola Theatre, 2009), and Our Ajax (Southwark, 2013). She has written the screenplay of The Children, based on the novel by Edith Wharton, and a BBC2 film entitled Do Not Disturb. Translations and adaptations include Marivaux's La Dispute, Jean Anouilh's Leocadia, Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelleas and Melisande for BBC Radio, Ariane Mnouchkine's Mephisto, adapted for the RSC in 1986, Sophocles's The Theban Plays (RSC, 1991), Euripides' Hecuba (ACT, San Francisco, 1995; BBC Radio 3, 2001) and Hippolytus (Riverside Studios, 2009), Eduardo de Filippo's Filumena (Peter Hall Company at the Piccadilly Theatre, 1998), Pirandello's Come tu mi vuoi, Gabriela Preissova's Jenufa (Arcola Theatre, 2008), and Racine's Brittanicus (Wilton's Music Hall, 2011).

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Timberlake WertenbakerPlays 1From"Our Country’s Good"
PHILLIP: The theatre is an expression of civilisation. We belong to a great country which has spawned great playwrights: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and even in our own time, Sheridan. The convicts will be speaking a refined, literate language and expressing sentiments of a delicacy they are not used to. It will remind them that there is more to life than crime, punishment. And we, this colony of a few hundred will be watching this together, for a few hours we will no longer be despised prisoners and hated gaolers. We will laugh, we may be moved, we may even think a little.
Three Birds Alighting on a Field (werthree)Premiered in1991- Print Books
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Timberlake WertenbakerPlays 1From"Our Country’s Good"
KETCH: I was given a guardian angel when I was born, like all good Catholics, why didn’t my guardian angel look after me better? But I think he must’ve stayed in Ireland. I think the devil tempted my mother to London and both our guardian angels stayed behind. Have you ever been to Ireland, sir? It’s a beautiful country. If I’d been an angel I wouldn’t have left it either. And when we came within six fields of Westminister, the devils took over.
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Timberlake WertenbakerPlays 1From"Our Country’s Good"
LIZ: Born under a ha’penny planet I was. Dad’s a nibbler, don’t want to get crapped. Mum leaves. Five brothers. I’m the only titter. I takes in washing. Then. My own father. Lady’s walking down the street, takes her wiper. She screams, he’s shoulder-clapped, says, it’s not me, Sir, it’s Lizzie, look, she took it. I’m stripped, beaten in the street, everyone watching. That night, I take my dad’s cudgel and try to kill him…
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Selected Works

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