Focusing on Glasgow’s earliest surviving music hall, the Britannia,later the Panopticon, this book explores the role of one of the city’s mosticonic cultural venues within the cosmopolitan entertainment market thatemerged in British cities in the nineteenth century. Shedding light on theincreasing diversity of commercial entertainment provided by such venues –offering everything from music hall, early cinema and amateur nights towaxworks, menageries and freak shows – ‘…this study alsoencompasses the model of community-based, working-class music hall whichcharacterised the Panopticon’s later years, challenging narratives of theprimacy of city centre variety.
Providinga comprehensive analysis of this dynamic popular theatre of the industrial age,Maloney examines the role of the hall’s managers, marketing and promotionalstrategies, audiences, and performing genres from the hall’s opening in 1859until final closure in 1938. The book also explores stage representations ofIrish and Jewish immigrant communities present in surrounding city centreareas, demonstrating the Britannia’s diasporic links to other British citiesand centres in North America, thus providing a multifaceted and pioneeringaccount of this still extant Victorian music hall.
