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

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

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

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

Premise

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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

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  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
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