Harry Rickards 1843-1911

Though Jackson returned to Britain, Rickards and his company toured cities and towns around Australia and New Zealand until 1874, when Rickards and his wife sailed for San Francisco. They made their American debut at Maguire’s New Theatre in October, but by now their marriage was in tatters. Rickards joined up with the renowned Lottie gymnastic group. Furthermore, he eventually formed a new domestic partnership with one of their stars, Mdlle Katrine, ‘The Empress of the Air’. Her real name appears to have been Kate Roscoe or Roscow. They headed for New York, appearing at the Theatre Comique on Broadway in February 1875, then went on to London, and subsequently toured South Africa. They married in 1880.In 1885, after another disastrous attempt at management, Rickards organised a new company for a second Australian and New Zealand tour. When he made a third tour in 1888, his brother, Jack Leete, became his general manager. After that came bookings in the United States, Britain and South Africa. He was back in Australia in 1892, and this time he was determined to stay.

Initially, houses were poor, as the Depression of the 1890s began to take its toll. In Sydney he was able to lease the Opera House, on the corner of York and King Streets, a site later occupied by Grace Brothers’ building. He opened there on 10 December 1892 with his ‘New Tivoli Minstrel and Grand Specialty Company of Forty Great Artistes’. The choice of the word ‘Tivoli’ was inspired: it implied that his artistes had come from the prestigious Tivoli music hall in London; in reality most of them were locally recruited. The following year he moved his company to the newer and more attractive Garrick Theatre in Castlereagh Street. He renamed it the Tivoli and opened there on 18 February 1893. It was an enormous success. Rickards catered for an eclectic, demanding and increasingly educated audience. Though his shows were pitched mainly at the city’s increasingly affluent middle classes, he did not hesitate to woo the poorer sections of the community who populated the gods, the cheapest section of the house.

During 1893 and most of 1894, Rickards’ formula remained pretty much unaltered: a basic company of versatile, popular regulars, often augmented by visiting acts, but containing no real stars. There was no shortage of young Australian talent treading the Tivoli boards at this time: Priscilla Verne, Harry Clay, the Leslie Brothers, Albert Whelan, George Sorlie, Florrie Forde and Billy Williams were typical. The Leslies, Florrie Forde and Billy Williams would find fame in London, and Williams returned to the Tivoli as a headliner in 1910.