Dramas to Color, Cut and Produce

The Ugly Stepsisters gape as Cinderella triumphs, surrounded by explosions of flowers and jubilant floating fairies.On horseback, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza charge an unarmed windmill.With waves crashing behind them, Othello and Desdemona argue in the harbor as Iago lurks ominously in the background.In a play, a movie, an opera or a ballet, these moments of drama would be fleeting, disappearing quickly into the next scene and the next. But happily for us, they?re all frozen and playing simultaneously, if silently, in the glass showcases of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., part of an entrancing exhibition called ?A Child?s View: 19th-Century Paper Theaters.?Ornate toys intended for the young but clearly designed to entertain (or at least impress) adults as well, paper theaters first appeared in the early 1800s, an outgrowth of London?s flourishing theater scene and popular print trade. Sold in engraved sheets ready to be colored, cut out, pasted onto cardboard and then glued together, the miniature playhouses could then be decorated with elaborate paper scenery and peopled with cutout figures in resplendent costumes and suitably histrionic poses. (For those with shorter attention spans and richer parents, the sheets could be purchased already hand-tinted.)All the coloring, cutting and construction culminated in ? tada! ? a performance, with the child actor-director-stage manager manipulating the characters around the set while reciting the dialogue furnished by a helpful accompanying script. Children could choose ?Three-Fingered Jack, the Terror of Jamaica? or ?Hamlet? or another of the nearly 300 ?juvenile dramas? printed in England between 1811 and 1860.By the 1820s, British toy theaters were available in the United States, and publishers in Germany and Austria were producing their own. Eventually manufacturers all over Europe were selling these 19th-century equivalents of coloring books, Lego blocks, action figures, dollhouses and video games all rolled into one. To play with them, children had to develop patience, dexterity and imagination. They were rewarded not just with the thrills provided by the toys? theatrical glamour and adventure-laden plots but also by the moral lessons embedded in the scripts. One Danish publisher emblazoned his theaters with the words ?Not Just for Pleasure? (?Ej Blot Til Lyst?).But pleasure is the order of the day at the Bruce. Drawn from the collection of Eric G. Bernard, the exquisite theaters, settings and figures in ?A Child?s View? have an irresistible appeal, at least for grown-ups. (Children may not all be charmed.) Even without their accouterments, these theaters are masterpieces of detail, some painted with architectural flights of fancy ? fluted columns, sculptured cherubs, rococo pediments ? and others with human embellishment: attentive patrons in the loges on each side, white-wigged musicians across the bottom. My favorite, from Spain, includes a bright orange prompter?s box at the lip of the stage.The settings range from a truly evil-looking prison cell ? what are the grappling hooks for, pray tell? ? to an elegant grand staircase painstakingly copied from the famous one at the Paris Opera. There?s a Spanish town, an Egyptian temple, even an Indian village for ?Pocahontas.? And while many of the characters are generic enough to serve in multiple settings, others, like Puss in Boots and Bluebeard, are vividly characterized.In his 1884 essay ?A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured,? Robert Louis Stevenson waxed nostalgic about the ?giddy joy? of his childhood paper theater. With this show, the Bruce gives the rest of us a taste of this bygone pastime.?A Child?s View: 19th-Century Paper Theaters,? Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, Conn., through Jan. 30. Information: brucemuseum.orgor (203) 869-0376.

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