Theatre Register

William Wheatley

Shows · William Wheatley

Director

William Wheatley was the manager of Niblo's Garden who staged The Black Crook (1866), combining a melodrama with a stranded French ballet troupe to create what is often called the first American musical.

Also credited on1 work

The Black Crook

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature2 passages

  • The Girl in Pink Tights purported to tell the story behind the production of The Black Crook , which is arguably the first American musical comedy. William Wheatley, the manager of the huge theatre Niblo’s Garden, was set to open Charles M. Barras’s melodrama The Black Crook . At the same time, Henry C. Jarrett and Harry Palmer’s New York…ebooks/Dietz, Dan/Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals, The - Dan Dietz.txt
  • William Wheatley, the manager of Niblo’s Garden, has a problem. His huge barn of a theatre (at Broadway and Prince Street) has an expensive commitment to The Black Crook , a Faustian melodrama by Charles M. Barras. Unfortunately, the script is preposterous – but Wheatley is lumbered with it.ebooks/Steyn, Mark/Broadway Babies Say Goodnight_ Musicals Then and Now - Mark Steyn.txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Any staging. This name appears in no production cast list we hold — 1,877 of 7,139 people are in that position, most of them writers, composers and designers rather than performers.
  • Birth or death year. Neither is on the record.
  • Any portrait. 1,626 of 7,139 people have one, so this is the usual case rather than the exception.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — director — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

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