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An old warhorse of Brisbane’s theatre scene has had a makeover to host one of the top shows of Brisbane Festival 2025.
The Twelfth Night Theatre, a 500-seater than opened in 1971, has been reimagined as a 1920s speakeasy for the month-long run of Gatsby at the Green Light.
Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina said it was the first time the theatre had been a part of the festival.
Gatsby at the Green Light is a major Brisbane Festival show staged in a revivified Twelfth Night Theatre in Bowen Hills.Credit: Morgan Roberts
“So many people have fond memories of the Twelfth Night, and it’s great that the Brisbane Festival welcomes this iconic Brisbane theatre into our program,” she said.
Gatsby at the Green Light is designed to transport audiences to the 1920s world of Jay Gatsby, the party-loving hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.
“You’re entering into Gatsby’s club, it’s full of some of his favourite people,” explained the show’s co-creator Craig Ilott.
“There’s song and dance, great aerial pieces, juggling, tap dancing, burlesque, it’s got it all.
Gatsby at the Green Light features acrobatics, juggling, fir-eating, music and burlesque.Credit: Morgan Roberts
“We collaborated with Kim Moyes from The Presets for [the soundtrack], and it’s one of the most exciting things in the show.”
The show was originally staged at the Sydney Opera House in 2023, where it ran for 15 weeks.
Australia’s only privately owned theatre, Twelfth Night, has been owned for the past 37 years by actor and entrepreneur Gail Wiltshire, and has hosted amateur, pro-amateur and professional productions.
Twelfth Night Theatre in 1971.Credit: Richard Stringer/State Library of Queensland
Stars of UK television, such as John Inman of Are You Being Served? and Gorden Kaye of ‘Allo ’Allo, frequently appeared there. Forthcoming productions include Priscilla – Queen of the Desert and Shirley Valentine.
Wiltshire said it was “bloody wonderful” to be hosting Gatsby.
“The whole place has been turned into Gatsby’s place – the bars, the extraordinary acts – very cheeky, a lot of them.”
The venue was originally built as a home for the Twelfth Night Theatre Company, established in 1936 and disbanded in 1976.
Retired University of Queensland theatre professor Richard Fotheringham said the company enjoyed glory days in the 1950s and ’60s, when it brought innovative plays by Brecht, Ionesco, Sartre and Beckett to Brisbane.
“Twelfth Night decided to take on the Queensland Theatre Company, and they built the theatre at Bowen Hills,” he said.
“They just didn’t have the money to compete. They tried various strategies, they added a restaurant, but it failed, and Gail Wiltshire bought it [in 1988].”
Wiltshire has funded renovations to the theatre through the estate of her son Christopher, a barrister who died in 2022.
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Additions include a new bar and an elevator to bring the building up to accessibility standards.
Wiltshire said she was “put on this earth” to be the theatre’s keeper.
“The people built her, the people love her, and she’s the mother theatre in Brisbane,” Wiltshire said.
She has offered to bequeath the theatre to the Queensland government.
“Queenslanders … just get up, and keep it here after I’m dead,” she said.
Gatsby at the Green Light runs until September 28.
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