A good friend of mine is directing a play that opens this weekend at CCC.

Based on a true story, “Our Country's Good” takes place in an Australian prison colony in the late 1780s. The play focuses on one lieutenant's attempts to put on a restoration comedy with a cast of violent and loathsome criminals. The young lieutenant sets out to prove that an organized activity, such as theater, can pacify and ennoble the rowdy convicts.

The story is humorous, with a healthy dose of pathos. But what I find most appealing is how timely the themes are.

The convicts in the play come from low-income families with little to no education. There are exceptions to every rule, but I think it is safe to say that people who break the law tend to come from families who live at or below the poverty line and that many criminals lack a high school education. I'm certainly not excusing criminal behavior, but I think it is interesting that similar parallels still exist between poverty, education and crime.

I am reminded of Saint Thomas More, who wrote in 1515 of the role society plays in creating criminals. In his popular work “Utopia,” More writes, “... if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”

In “Our Country's Good,” much of the upheaval among the prisoners stems from stealing food, which is heavily rationed in the prison colony. This is not too dissimilar to the food crisis facing New York today. In fact, Gov. David Paterson is asking for more than $1 million in emergency food relief for upstate New York food pantries because some families simply can't afford all the groceries they need.

And everyone knows the horrifying connection between scarcity and desperation. I mean, if people would trample a man to death for a Nintendo Wii, just imagine how people might behave if their food supply was cut off.

Finally, the play explores the importance of art in education, a subject that I am very passionate about.

I certainly encourage everyone to pop out and see the play if you can.

You might be intrigued by how little society has changed in 200 years.

Estabrook's column appears Mondays in The Citizen, and she can be reached at estabrookcarole@yahoo.com