Hoar, Stuart — Squatter

Victoria University Press 1988 Paperback, 80pp. Squatter takes place in and around the estate of Carnegie, on the Canterbury Plains, in 1894. It is a time of change. The new middle class is in the ascendancy; the Liberal government is attempting to force the breakup into smaller farms of the large feudal estates . But Squatter is not like most historical plays. Evading the limits of conventional stage naturalism, it is a rich mix of theatrical spectacle, larger than life characters and vivid, deliberately anachronistic language which will entertain and provoke. ‘A great raw brute of a play which grabs our colonial past by the scruff of the neck and gives it a hefty boot in the pants.’ —Peter Calder, New Zealand Herald. Page edges foxing, cover lightly worn and slightly faded. (ISBN: 9780864730749). Good.