He collaborated from 1942 with Joyce Grenfell for her West End revues (including Tuppence Coloured and Penny Plain) and her one-woman shows. He also wrote for West End musical revues directed by Laurier Lister, including Airs on a Shoestring Addinsell's music is in the "English light music" style.Lamb, Andrew (2002). 'British light music: sound good, feel good', Gramophone November 2002, pp.34–38.
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Tin- foil tinsel in different colours, mostly in pre-stamped shapes, was applied with glue. The theatrical prints cost one penny plain, and two coloured, with a standard size of about 12 by 10 inches (250 x 200 mm). Actors, whether heros or villains, were more often represented than actresses. The artists are not named but the prolific political cartoonist and illustrator George Cruikshank is suspected of being involved.
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In 2011-12, he did an extensive Canadian tour of his new play, an apocalyptic comedy, Penny Plain. His latest work, The Daisy Theatre, inspired by underground Czech marionette theatre, is part improvisation and part cabaret and includes short vignettes penned by other Canadian playwrights. Burkett usually writes his own scripts. Appearing onstage throughout each performance, he manipulates and is the voice of every character, from newborn ducks to dying mothers, Christ and Satan and everything in between.
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In 1948 Flanders and Swann wrote a song called "In the D'Oyly Cart", a satire of the company and the rote "business" and gestures that it was accused of repeating. The song was first performed in the revue Oranges and Lemons (1948) and revived in Penny Plain (1951). It was broadcast in 1974 and included as the first track on the 1975 Flanders and Swann album, And Then We Wrote.Shepherd, Marc. "Flanders & Swann's "In the D'Oyly Cart" (1974)" .
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16 Away from the classics, he played the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz at the Phoenix Theatre in 1943. In 1947, at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, Adrian began performing in a series of revues (Tuppence Coloured, Oranges and Lemons, Penny Plain, Airs on a Shoestring, From Here to There, and Fresh Airs) in which he played more than 2,000 performances,The Times 12 July 1955, p. 5 and established himself, in Sheridan Morley's words, "as a superlative – if eccentric – light comedian." Fellow performers in the revues included Joyce Grenfell, Rose Hill and Elisabeth Welch.
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True to nature it might be, but audiences > accustomed to theatrical types verging on the border-land of caricature > would (so managers thought) be hardly likely to accept a mere photograph of > human life. It was the old tale of actors' portraits "Penny plain and > tuppence coloured." The coloured articles had the readiest sale in the > shops, ergo they could not be made too florid in the theatres. Miss Wilton, > however, having in common with Sothern estimated Society at its true worth, > declared that danger was better than dullness, selected her supporters, and > under the now delighted author's superintendence, commenced rehearsals.
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The revue and the trio were highly successful, and Lister commissioned further work from the pair for his next production, Penny Plain (1951). Among their contributions to the latter were "Prehistoric Complaint", a solo for Max Adrian, "dressed in bits of fur as a sort of mis-fit caveman",Notes to EMI LP EMCM 3088 and "Surly Girls", with Adrian, Desmond Walter-Ellis and Jimmy Thompson as a trio of appalling St Trinian's schoolgirls. The Flanders and Swann numbers in the two shows worked so well that Lister invited the pair to write much of his next revue, Airs on a Shoestring (1953).
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Benjamin Pollock became a maker of toy theatres – or the 'juvenile drama' as it was called at the time, selling toy theatre drops and characters from contemporary dramas for "a penny plain, twopence coloured". Pollock generally republished older plays by using existing plates, simply changing the names of the actors. His version of Cinderella, for example, which could be bought from Pollock in the 1880s, used plates from 1844.Toy Theatre – the National Museum of Australia website Pollock's business was not a success as tastes in the 1880s changed towards magic lantern shows and other innovations, but when Robert Louis Stevenson visited the shop in 1884 things considerably improved.
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Smetana also uses the technique of musical reminiscence, where particular themes are used as reminders of other parts of the action; the lilting clarinet theme of "faithful love" is an example, though it and other instances fall short of being full-blown Wagnerian leading themes or Leitmotifs. Large has commented that despite the colour and vigour of the music, there is little by way of characterisation, except in the cases of Kecal and, to a lesser extent, the loving pair and the unfortunate Vašek. The two sets of parents and the various circus folk are all conventional and "penny-plain" figures. In contrast, Kecal's character - that of a self- important, pig-headed, loquacious bungler - is instantly established by his rapid-patter music.
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The original toy theatres were mass-produced replicas of popular plays, sold as kits that people assembled at home, including stage, scenery, characters and costumes. They were printed on paperboard, available at English playhouses and commercial libraries for "a penny plain or two pence coloured." Hobbyists often went to great pains to not only hand-colour their stages but to embellish their toy theatre personae with bits of cloth and tinsel; tinsel print characters could be bought pre-tinselled, or a wide range of supplies for home tinselling could be bought. Just as the toy-sized stages diminished a play’s scale, their corresponding scripts tended to abridge the text, paring it down to key characters and lines for a shorter, less complicated presentation. In the first half of the 19th century, more than 300 of London’s most popular plays saw the issue as toy theatres.
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Stage theater of the early 19th century had been based more on spectacle than on depth of plot or character, and these characteristics lent themselves effectively to the format of toy theater. Toward the end of the 19th century, European popular drama had shifted its preference to the trend of Realism, marking a dramaturgical swing toward psychological complexity, character motivation and settings utilizing ordinary three-dimensional scenic elements. This trend in stage theater did not make an easy conversion to its toy counterpart, and with the fanciful dramas of 50 years prior being out of fashion, the toy theaters that remained in print fell into obsolescence. Despite its fall in popularity, toy theater remained in the realm of influential artists who championed its resurgence. In 1884 British author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an essay in tribute of toy theater’s tiny grandeur entitled “Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured” in which he extolled the virtues of the dramas supplied by Pollock's. Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop on the Spitalfields Life website - 17 December 2009The Rise and Fall of Toy Theatre - Craftsmanship Magazine - 6 December 2015 Other children’s authors like Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Andersen also dabbled in toy theater, as did Oscar Wilde.
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