Black Crook

“The ‘Black Crook’ is still drawing as well as ever at Niblo’s Garden, and will continue to do so for the next two months, should Mr. Wheatley conclude to keep it on so long.  Those who want good seats should engage them a few days ahead.”

“From a Novel ‘Sauce.’

Niblo’s.

The Black Crook has took, and by hook or by crook

All New York at the ‘crook’ is rushing to look;

C.M. Barras’ plot, with the ladies from Paris in,

Is, t’is true, now turned turvey top-sey em-barrassing.

But this goes for nothing—our elders and youth

Just now are so morally stricken, forsooth,

That instead of a story they much prefer truth;

Hence, like honest Christians, they haste to go where

With their own naked eyes they can see the thing bare.”

“The attendance at Niblo's to witness Mr. Barras’ spectacle of the ‘Black Crook’ is as good as ever, even the matinees being as crowded as the evening performances. Alike credit is due to Mr. Barras who wrote the play, and to Mr. Wheatley, who has produced it in such magnificent style. Never in the history of the American stage has anything of a spectacular character approached it in the grandeur of scenic effects, costumes, appointments, etc. The imported model artists who figure in it help to give variety to the show, and pander to a taste already sufficiently depraved without this incentive to greater lewdness. It will not be surprising if a revival of nude model artist exhibitions throughout the city should follow this exposition of undressed dancing girls at Niblo’s. The one would draw as well as the other.”

“In the naked drama of the ‘Black Crook,’ at Niblo’s, the imported ballet girls nightly ‘crook the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift may follow’ dancing. The play draws nearly as well as ever, and the most attractive feature of this raree show, the closing scene, is always witnessed amidst the general enthusiasm. When this spectacle was first produced here, the press attributed its success altogether to the dancers, while the author of the play received no credit whatever for his share of the work. And yet ‘The Black Crook’ was recently produced at the Metropolitan Theatre, Buffalo, without the imported nudities, and its success has been of the most marked character, the house being crowded to repletion every evening. Will those foreign critics and managers who condemn native productions make a note of this?”