This article examines the representation of Aboriginality in Charles Reade's It is Never Too Late to Mend (1865). It does so by imagining the character of Jacky-Kalingaloonga in performance, specifically in performance by Stanislaus Calhaem – by a white actor in black-face – on the opening night of the melodrama's first London production. Bringing Calhaem back on stage in the mind's eye turns on recovering historic modes of reception, on reconstructing how audience members participated in bringing Jacky-Kalingaloonga ‘to life’. This problematizes readings of the mid-Victorian construction of Aboriginality which presume ‘fact’ claims such as Reade made for Jacky-Kalingaloonga were straightforwardly accepted by Victorian audiences as grounds on which to interpret the character as an authentic ‘anthropological’ specimen. Any promotion of this outcome instead became part of a play between the anthropological and the theatrical which Victorian audiences were expected to negotiate, incorporating that negotiation into an imperialist gesture effected in the process of performance on stage and in the auditorium.