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Hugo’s Toy Theatre

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Issue 3 – 1st July 2004

 

Welcome to this the third news bulletin for “Hugo’s Toy Theatre”.

 

I have had an exciting two weeks since the last newsletter.

 

Firstly, I have acquired two toy theatres. A 1946 Pollock’s reproduction “Regency Theatre”, including proscenium and wooden rigging to take back scenes and wings. The wooden floor and orchestra were missing. The proscenium was originally Green’s design, undated, but from about 1850. This was glued, by the purchaser, onto a Bakelite moulded stage front (my purchase is not perfect by any means, but a good example). The second theatre I purchased was nearly identical, but a 1960’s version, this time complete with stage floor and orchestra. There are quite a few significant cosmetic differences between the two theatres, although essentially they are the same theatre.

 

 

1960’s Version (shown above)

 

 

1946 Pollock’s Regency Theatre

1960’s Pollock’s Regency Theatre

Proscenium

Simply coloured – screen-printed

More elaborately coloured - screen-printed.

Bakelite Stage Front

Black

Brown

Stage Floor

Plywood with paper stage flooring

Unfinished plywood. With 4 holes at the front to be cut out for stage lighting.

Rigging

Cross struts are nailed in place and are very susceptible to warping. Rounded corners to uprights and main top beams. Dark brown stained wood, probably pine.

Cross struts are glued into position. Uprights and main beams are cut square. Unfinished pine.

Orchestra

Correct scale from original, but with ends cut. Glued on stained plywood.

Reduced scale to fit entire orchestra. Glued on unfinished plywood.

Original Packaging

Buff coloured cardboard box.

Red cardboard box.

 

Secondly, my good friend, David Powell, has lent me a considerable quantity of Green’s works. It will take weeks, or more likely, months to scan these works in to my computer and recreate them on this web-site. There are more than ten complete plays, numerous side wings and a few top drops. There are also a multitude of Green’s other works, including many theatrical portraits and a small collection of royal portraits. There is also “Green’s new Sixteen in Dred” which was engraved (not very well) on the back side of a Zinc Plate by JK Green’s son George James Green (my 2x Great Grandfather).

 

New plays already added are:-

 

Red Rover

Richard the Third

Harlequin Robin Hood

 

New plays to be up-loaded on this web-site soon, include:-

 

Dred

Harlequin St George

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Therese

Wapping Old Stairs

Belphegor the Conjuror

Goody Goose.

 

My scanner is going to be very busy for the foreseeable future. My thanks go to David Powell for giving such a wonderful opportunity.

 

Web-site Technical stuff.

 

Regular visitors to this site will have noticed that many of the pages on this web-site have lost their background images. This has been done to speed up your access to the images that matter, namely the plays and other works of JK Green. It may not look so nice, but viewers using 56K modems were spending about 2 minutes waiting for images to load on several pages before they reached the plays. Hopefully this will speed up all viewers’ enjoyment of this site.

 

Some users of MS Internet Explorer were encountering blank screens when clicking on certain images (mostly in the plays). They weren’t getting errors, just blank screens. This has been fixed in most cases.

 

More news in a couple of week’s time.

 

Hugo Brown

3x Great Grandson of JK Green.