Captain Plume has arrived in Shrewsbury to recruit for Her Majesty’s army. His methods may not focus on the glory and heroism of war, but his results speak for themselves, even if he has accidentally recruited for the army the woman he sought to woo for himself.

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The War of Spanish Succession 
The War of Spanish Succession was a most interesting interlude in European history. When the Spanish king died, all the kings, emperors, and princes of the continent had been arguing for ten years about who would succeed him. When Philip, who was the grandson of the French king, was crowned, the Italian Emperor and the English King got together over a pint and decided to pop their respective armies into France for a good old stoush. Strangely enough, no one needed evidence of weapons of mass destruction back then, either. Unfortunately, King William only got to see a little of the barney, because he dropped off the twig before he even got his sword dirty, and left it to his successor, Queen Anne, to take care of the biff.  
 
The Recruitment Drive 
Annie got her gun, as it were, and so the whole of Europe got on with what turned out to be a lovely war. That is, until the British had to go and spoil it all by winning the Battle of Blenheim. By this time, half of the French royal family was dead, as was half of the British army. So recruiting officers were sent into the deepest recesses of darkest England to seek out more young men to be staked to death on French bayonets. This, of course, is where George Farquhar comes in. 
Farquhar, having married under the misapprehension of his fiancée’s wealth, was desperate for money, and found himself recruiting in the dales of Shropshire. How much of The Recruiting Officer is based on his actual experiences in this county on the Welsh border, we can only guess, but we do know that this play is political satire at its best. 
 
Production History 
The Recruiting Officer hit the boards of London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on the 8th of April 1706, just over 301 years ago. The Biographica Dramatica cites a particular performance of this production in which the actor playing Justice Balance had too much to drink before going on and set the leading lady right off course. 
While it is well-known that The Recruiting Officer was the first drama of the Western tradition performed in the fledgling colony of New South Wales in 1789, it is not so well known that it was also the first drama to be professionally produced in the colony of New York in 1732, or indeed anywhere in the Americas. It was on the 4th of June 1789 that the play was performed in Sydney to mark the birthday of King George III, and was no less plagued by dramas than our production. The leading lady was facing the gallows, which is, I suppose, far more substantial a hindrance to a great performance than anything we have faced. It seems that productions of The Recruiting Officer have more reason to strike fear into the producer's heart than productions of The Scottish Play, and it is my intention henceforth to refer to this as The Shropshire Play. 
 
On This Production 
I was attracted to this play and wanted to direct it because of its intense paradoxes. The notion that such a serious theme could be explored in such a light-hearted manner is appealing, but more than that, I am intrigued by the paradox of this 301-year old play (from an age in which war was accepted as a part of life) adopting an anti-war stance. Its scathing commentary on England's involvement in such an idiotic war echoes the tune we’ve been hearing for the last six years. The more we feel threatened, the more we retreat into the familiar, like a pair of old jeans (have you noticed how old-looking jeans have become fashionable again since 9/11?). Just as the political climate heated up at the turn of the eighteenth century, so it heated up at the beginning of the twenty-first; but three hundred years later the bombs are a little bigger, the battlefields more broad, and the rhetoric more complicated. There is a lot to be afraid of, and so, here is a play to remind us that humanity has come through more absurd times relatively unscathed. Perhaps this age of idiocy won’t last much longer...