Flood (play)

Flood
Written byEunice Hanger
Date premiered18 October 1955
Place premieredTwelfth Night Theatre, Brisbane
Original languageEnglish
Genreverse drama
SettingA small Queensland country town

Flood is a 1955 Australian play by Eunice Hanger. It was one of her best known works.[1]

The play was runner up in the famous 1955 playwriting competition run by the Playwrights' Advisory Board which was won by Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and The Torrents.[2]

The Bulletin said "The play is at its best when it is documentary. Eunice Hanger is not afraid to organise the gathering into yerse-speaking groups in order to comment on the increasing danger and to visualise the havoc wrought in the town... With judicious pruning there is a good play here —a genuine outcrop in Queensland soil, enriching the whole Australian field."[3]

Adaptation[edit]

The play was adapted for ABC radio in 1956 by Catherine Shepherd.[4][5]

Premise[edit]

A family is threatened by rising flood waters in a small Queensland country town.Janie Morrison, the daughter of a country school-teacher, is engaged to be married to a young doctor, Eric Mulray, but a few years earlier Eric was partly responsible for the accident that made a semi-cripple of Janie's brother. This and other dramas are brought out in the flood.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Richard Fotheringham, 'Hanger, Eunice (1911–1972)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hanger-eunice-10407/text18443, published first in hardcopy 1996, accessed online 7 September 2023.
  2. ^ "A.B.C. Week of Australian Plays", ABC Weekly, 18 (10), Sydney, 10 March 1956, retrieved 24 July 2023 – via Trove
  3. ^ "Stage and Music", The Bulletin, 76 (3951), Sydney, N.S.W: John Haynes and J.F. Archibald, 2 Nov 1955, retrieved 7 September 2023 – via Trove
  4. ^ "A.B.C. Week of Australian Plays", ABC Weekly, 18 (10), Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1956-03-10, retrieved 8 January 2022
  5. ^ "Radio plays for next week", ABC Weekly, 18 (32), Sydney, 11 August 1956, retrieved 7 September 2023 – via Trove

External links[edit]