King's Theatre Pantomime King's Theatre Pantomime The pantomime at the King's has been running annually since 1971. Before that a few pantomimes were staged from 1964/65 after Glasgow Corporation bought the theatre from Howard & Wyndham Ltd. Pantomime in Scotland has always been popular, particularly in Glasgow, and there has been a long tradition developed from the 1860s. From the 1970s pantomime productions for the King's were funded jointly by the City Councils of Glasgow and Edinburgh and staged in both cities. Stanley Baxter one of Britain's top pantomime dames performed at the King's in the 1980s in Cinderella, written and directed by
Pantomime that continues in pantomime today. As manager of Drury Lane in the 1870s, Augustus Harris wrote a series of extraordinarily popular pantomimes, focusing on the spectacle of the productions, that pushed this transition by emphasizing comic business in the pantomime opening and grand processionals. By the end of the 19th century, the harlequinade had become merely a brief epilogue to the pantomime, dwindling into a brief display of dancing and acrobatics. It lingered for a few decades longer but finally disappeared, although a few of its comic elements had been incorporated into the pantomime stories. The last harlequinade was played