Pollock's Toy Theatre Shop

 

Pollock's Toy Theatre Shop

 

VO
The show must go on, even when the theatre is only two feet high and the actors performances are literally wooden and two dimensional. Toy theatres have been popular for over two centuries, and Pollock’s Toy Shop in Covent Garden is carrying on this diminutive but enduring thespian tradition.

 

IV Peter Baldwin

Initially, the idea was established as a souvenir, a memento of the real theatre, and it was only a development from that idea that theatres came into being, so that these little portraits of actors can be cut out and mounted onto the stages. And children got hold of the idea very quickly and soon toy theatres became a very popular children’s past time.

 

VO
The original Benjamin Pollock sold toy theatres over two hundred years ago. Although his shop was in Hoxton, the current venue has been going in Covent Garden for over 25 years, and they’re proud of their long tradition.

 

IV
Well these are the rather more special and more expensive theatres that we sell, a whole group of Italian, wooden Italian theatres, and at the top, the theatre with a play of just William, the Richmont Crompton character. My favourite is this. This is a Pollock’s Toy theatre, it’s a reproduction in miniature of an early theatre made by Benjamin Pollock a long time ago, and it’s a card, a pop-up card. Folds down, folds out again.

 

IV
Many adults buy toy theatres supposedly for their children or grand children or god children, I suspect very often for themselves. Perhaps they had a toy theatre in their youth.