| The Earthquake Shakes the Land | |
| Format: | verse drama play |
| Runtime: | 90 mins |
| Start Time: | 8pm |
| End Time: | 9.30pm |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Syndicates: | ABC |
| Director: | Frank Cewlow |
The Earthquake Shakes the Land is an Australian radio play in verse by Douglas Stewart. It concerns the Invasion of the Waikato in the New Zealand Wars. It was a companion piece to Stewart's The Golden Lover.[1]
The play was well regarded. The ABC produced it again in 1948.
The Bulletin reviewed it saying the play was "something too big for an hour and a half of radio. It is right that it should be played fast, but haste is different; and the impression is that this is being hastily done."
Leslie Rees wrote "it had only a half-success when heard on the A.B.C. air."[2] Unlike Stewart's other verse plays performed on radio, The Fire in the Snow, Ned Kelly, Shipwrecked, Fisher's Ghost and The Golden Lover, it was not published in book form.[3]
During the New Zealand Wars, a Maori woman, Ngaere, had to choose between two lovers, one a Scottish settler, the other, a Maori.