Harlequin Puppet Theatre

Harlequin Puppet Theatre

This small-scale building references both the Royal Festival Hall in London, built for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and the Cardiff Empire Swimming Pool, opened in 1958 for the Empire and Commonwealth Games. It is a long and narrow rectangular structure constructed of limestone rubble with a timber and felt barrel roof that overhangs the walls on all four sides.

The front façade features a foyer area composed of floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides with stone at the corners. A concave glass curtain wall of eight tall and narrow panels with steel framing is recessed between stone corners beneath the overhanging shallow curved roof. The spandrel is filled with vertical timbers and displays a sign reading 'Puppet Theatre' that was added sometime after 1963. Seven electric lights are set into the underside of the roof overhang.

On the right sea-facing side, another sign from the mid to late 1960s is mounted on a board attached to the stone wall, reading 'Marionette Theatre'. Beyond a four-pane floor-to-ceiling window and a short vertically timbered section, five brick arches of varying size are incorporated into the lower part of the wall, marking the doorways of the former range of cottages now infilled with stone. A larger stone arch over double doors serves as the auditorium fire escape, which was replaced in the 21st century. Glass double doors open into the foyer on the left side, beneath a timber and felt shallow curved porch canopy. A vertical timber section to the left of the entrance contains three square windows. The rear of the building features timber cladding on two sides at the northeast corner, with three square windows on the right-side wall and an artists' entrance up a short flight of steps in the rear gable end, covered by a projecting arched timber and felt porch. The northwest corner is slightly clipped.

The foyer houses a central small booking office cubicle and rest rooms, with the entrance to the auditorium on the right.

The auditorium is decorated in an Italianate style with cast plasterwork and paintings by Eric Bramall, situating the theatre within the traditions of Music Hall and Variety Theatre. Pairs of relief squared columns, fluted with composite capitals including a human face wearing a turban, frame five arches with scrolled keystones on either side wall stepping down towards the stage. These are embellished with painted murals depicting arcadian landscapes. Two deeper arches at the rear of the auditorium lack murals; these and the back wall are decorated instead with peg board squares. The auditorium has its aisle to the right and seating to the left, steeply raked to allow the rearmost rows a clear view of the generally 60 centimetre tall marionette actors. There are 117 plush red upholstered lacquered timber seats with ashtrays, acquired from a local theatre that had recently closed in 1958, arranged in rows of six or seven. The barrel ceiling is painted gold and carries two chandeliers; the ceiling has been patched with timber in places.

The stage comprises a forward section large enough for humans, with a proscenium arch over it. Beyond this is a second proscenium, a golden frame 100 centimetres tall and 240 centimetres wide with a changeable backdrop for the marionette actors. The backstage area contains a timber 'gallows' over the smaller inner stage for suspending the actors during performances, and a raised platform for puppeteers to stand on, out of view of the audience.