When BarnDoor Productions community theatre brought William Shakespeare back to summer in Perth last year, they hoped for good audience reception.
They got sold-out houses for the entire run, averaging 106% of original projections!
Returning to Perth’s Crystal Palace, their 2026 offering is a rollicking rendition of The Bard’s most beloved comedy, Twelfth Night or What You Will — which, by the way, is simply Elizabethan for “whatever”.
Once again partnering with Foolhardy, the company renovating the Perth Manor on Drummond Street in such dramatic fashion, 2026’s Twelfth Night is BarnDoor’s fourteenth Shakespeare — and their second Twelfth Night. The first was presented in the gardens of the Perth Manor back in 1997, and at least one cast member is returning to reprise their role.
Foolhardy director Toby Shannan fondly remembered seeing those original Shakespeare-in-the-garden shows, and when he came to own those gardens, decided to bring summer the Bard back to Perth. Last year’s Love’s Labors Lost was the first in what organizers are hoping to develop into a long-term summer attraction for the town.
Building on BarnDoor Productions’ 31-year history of fast, high-energy theatre, Twelfth Night is being presented as an open-stage, free-flowing production, where the actors themselves will present all the colour and spectacle the show needs, along with lots of laughs and surprises. The “arena” staging of the show places the audience close to the action — and there is action of many kinds. Music, fencing, and more are on offer.
The cast of fourteen have been rehearsing all spring, upstairs at the newly renovated Sheriff’s House on Gore Street — itself an early Victorian building now owned by Foolhardy — and will be moving the show over to Perth’s Crystal Palace on the Tay Basin for performances on July 29, 30 and 31, all at 8pm. The show should run about two hours with one intermission.
Future plans are afoot. At the request of Foolhardy’s Toby Shannan, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on the menu for 2027 (which will be BDP Producing Director David Jacklin’s eighth Midsummer, the first of which was in 1968!). For 2028, a new version of a 1611 comedy The Tamer Tamed, rebutting Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, is in the works.
Twelfth Night, or What You Will runs July 29, 30, 31 at 8pm at the Crystal Palace in downtown Perth. Tickets are $25, available at bardunderglass.com. Call 267–1884 for more details. And don’t forget to bring some bug spray!