| Foiled, or Australia Twenty Years Ago | |
| Premiere: | 1871 |
| Orig Lang: | English |
| Genre: | melodrama |
Foiled, or Australia Twenty Years Ago is a 1871 Australian stage play by Walter Cooper.[1] [2]
The play was popular and was still being revived fifteen years after Cooper's death.[3] [4]
According to Leslie Rees the play "was no less riotous and tropic-hued in plot than other melodramas of the period. It was filled to the neck with villainy. It contained... what was probably the first example of that breath-dispelling, blood-refrigerating type of incident so often copied by the silent films of two generations later, wherein a man is tied to a log in a timber mill and slowly directed towards the engine-driven saw, only to be saved from bisection in the nick of time."[5]
The Sydney Evening News said "the characters are boldly sketched and well contrasted one with another, the dialogue is unstrained and well pointed, and the details of the plot are elaborated in a manner which produces an unflagging interest in the piece throughout its performance."[6]
The Age said "The piece is of considerable merit in its way, and will compare favorably with any of the later productionsof Boucicault."[7]
The Argus, reviewing a 1879 revival, said the play "is made up of stock materials and it ends with a stock sensation scene" but allowed "its construction is so much better than the average that there is no flagging in the interest and the episodal filling in is judiciously distributed. It is not a high class play but it is a play one may sit out withought weariness. Moreover it is Australian and most of the characters have a local colour which helps the interest proportionally."[8]
The Geelong Advertiser called it "an unqualified success".[9]
The play was also performed in the USA, under the title Magdalen.[10]