In Hoboken

The Black Crook. It was on Sept. 12, 1866, that The Black Crook entered Niblo's Garden in New York. Buxom young ladies appeared in tights which revealed not only their ankles but their hips. In those days people believed with Queen Victoria in the theory that women had no understanding whatever. Next day James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald commended the city to the fire and brimstone of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sunday after Sunday pulpits boomed denunciation. Soon at Niblo's Garden there was only standing room.

Last week in Hoboken, N. J., their ''last seacoast of Bohemia," Christopher Morley, Cleon Throckmorton, Conrad Milliken and Harry Wagstarf Gribble revived The Black Crook. Next day not a newspaper blushed, no pulpit peeped. Nevertheless, Hoboken's Lyric Theatre had scarcely more than standing room, not, of course, because The Black Crook is shocking in 1929, but because it is "quaint.'' The only trouble with it is that it is entirely too quaint. In their efforts to be sure the audience understands just how funny it looks and sounds after all these years, the actors fall into too-broad burlesque. Moreover, the producers have" sought to modernize the script here and there, and for the Amazons who marched their hourglass figures before the oglers of 1866, have been substituted some more or less fleshless girls of the 1929 model.

For the most part, however, it is great good fun. There is the preposterous old plot which was taken bodily from Faust. And there is some very lovely dancing and singing by Miss Beth Meakins.

The Black Crook is, of course, only the latest chapter in the astonishing adventure of four gentlemen in Hoboken. For years the Three-Hours-For-Lunch-Club, a semi-mythical organization of Manhattan gourmets, has met occasionally in the New Jersey port, drawn across the Hudson by German cooking and the fact that Hoboken's beer has scarcely heard of the 18th amendment. It was on one of these trips that Cleon Throckmorton, scenic designer, discovered the old Rialto Theatre, buried under 70 years of dust. He interested Christopher Morley, novelist-playwright-essayist-colyumist ; Harry Wagstaff Gribble, playwright; and Conrad Milliken, lawyer-poet. Eventually the four leased it and dusted it.

Their original intention was merely to use the old playhouse for their own amusement. They gathered together a company best described as semiprofessional and last Labor Day threw the doors open for their first production, a revival of The Barker, a Broadway hit. not caring much whether they even paid expenses. They didn't. Nor did they care. They kept on, producing Mr. Morley's own play, Pleased to Meet You, reviving Broadway and The Old Soak, going into red ink but having a very pleasant time of it.

Then, just before Christmas, they produced After Dark, or Neither Maid, Wife, nor Widow, a play as old as their theatre by Dion Boucicault* Before they really knew what had happened they had a hit on their hands. People came over from sophisticated Broadway to hiss the villain. Telephone calls for reservations were so numerous that six telephones were in stalled. Mail orders reached 2,500 a day. Broadway managers offered $50,000 for the privilege of moving the production across the river. The four remained firm. They stayed in Hoboken and did not even raise the prices ($1.50 top, Saturday night $2). The play shows every indication of running forever.

Many things have happened since. The Hoboken Chamber of Commerce has feted the four miracle men and been gustily God-bless-you-Sir-ed by Miraculist Morley. Jersey City businessmen have sought to lure them to their city to revive its ancient glories. The four have bought the Rialto Theatre and have leased the Lyric, down the street, where they have now installed The Black Crook. And, it is rumored, they are soon to build an apartment house for artists and writers on the banks of the Hudson in the city they have reclaimed.

*Pronounced Boo-see-ko. Playwright Boucicault's real first name was Dionysius, which he could not bear. Two present bearers of the name Boucicault are the short, stocky Ives Boucicaults, father & son, French golf professionals. Ives Jr. won the open championship of France at the age of 14, in 1923. Ives Sr., one-armed, goes around La Boulie in 70 to 74.