Cirrus@Austlit

Melodrama.

In its review of the 1904 Perth production of When the Tide Rises, the West Australian records : 'The thrilling series of occurrences contingent upon the rising of the tide, as seen through strong dramatic spectacles at the Theatre Royal on Saturday night, should be sufficient to hold an audience spellbound for hours, provided it be an audience that loves highly-spiced melodrama and is not too exacting in the matter of probabilities and facts. The author... has helped [herself] to liberal supplies of all the elements of sensation - a detective, a profligate, a gentleman burglar, a treacherous innkeeper, a drugged drink, a midnight tragedy and a beautiful girl or two - and in four moving acts [she] sounds some of the worst depths of passion and the most dazzling heights of heroism and devotion. The strongest and most reprehensible character in the piece, one Ison [Albert Lucas, is] a sort of king of thieves, who has his counterpart in the bete noire of Sherlock Holmes... Miss Howarde herself contrived under the difficulties imposed in the interpretation of a dumb girl's part, to bring some of her vivacious personality into the piece, and Miss Nellie Dalton gave a faithful picture of a distressed wife. Humour was supplied by Mr Elton Black, who as Larry Larkspur, contrived with the help of Miss Violet Beard, as Tilly Andrews, to impart a much-needed laugh into a piece otherwise far too strenuous for a hot night in Perth' (19 December 1904, p5).

According to advertising in Brisbane Courier in 1925 the play comprised four acts, these being : Act 1. Zach Ison's Retreat ; Back from the Races ; The Robbery ; The Creeping Waters ; The Ebb Tide ; Act 2. The Horse ; Sorrow ; What the Cellar Held ; The Tide Rising ; Act 3. The Gardens ; The Dumb Decoy ; The Assignation ; The Tide Risen ; Act 4. The Secret Discovered ; The Tide Turns ; Happiness and Reunion (7 November 1925, p2).