MTFest returns to The Other Palace in 2026 showcasing six new musicals
The Other Palace proudly welcomes back MTFestUK 2026, featuring six musicals over three weeks, from 27 January - 15 February at The Other Palace Studio.
First introduced in 2019, MTFestUK has championed bold, original musical theatre, with many works reaching full productions in the UK and beyond. This year, audiences can enjoy six fresh pieces through intimate 1-hour workshop sharings, encouraging audiences to experience, explore, engage and support musical theatre in its earliest stages of development.
Artistic Director at The Other Palace, Paul Taylor-Mills, said: “This is so exciting! I can’t wait to see the next season of MTFestUK coming to life. MTFestUK has become such an important platform for musical theatre, giving many emerging and established artists the chance to share their work. Year after year, we see musicals from the festival move on to full productions, which proves its impact and success. It’s inspiring to witness the festival continually open doors for creativity and innovation in the art form.”
From digital-age community, hotel-bound suspense, witch-hunting, influencer pitfalls, to a charming deceiver, and a new queer legend - this season goes everywhere:
Shining in Misery: A King-Size Parody
Music: Andrew Abrams
Book & Lyrics: Mark-Eugene Garcia
Book: Colleen DuVall
Director: Gary Lloyd
Experience a musical parody of King-size proportions! During the Misery of a blizzard, five people are drawn to the Shining lights of the Overlook Hotel. This includes Jack: the hotel’s new caretaker, Wendy: his unhappy wife, Danny: their clairvoyant son, Annie: a volatile nurse, and Paul: the mysterious unconscious man she drags up to room 217. As the storm grows so do the mysteries of the hotel and the guests sing and vocalize while hacking an onslaught of visitors — human, animal, and supernatural. Will this group be able to harmonize through IT, take a Stand, or fade into The Mist?
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Legendary
Book, Music & Lyrics: Cheeyang Ng
Director: Emilio Ramos
Legendary is a vibrant, ritualistic solo musical that traces a queer Asian immigrant’s journey to reclaim lineage, language, and belonging. Guided by Chinese mythology and the memories they carry across continents, the Narrator invites the audience into circle singing and call-and-response to co-create the story in real time. Each chapter reveals another fracture — home, family, gender, legacy — until the Narrator begins to imagine a new creation myth rooted in their own truth. Intimate, playful, and defiantly joyful, Legendary blurs concert, ritual, and theatre as it asks: What happens when you become the myth you never saw
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Tristan
Writer: Matt Jones
Composer: Kele Okereke
Tristan is charming, gorgeous and can sweep you off your feet. He’s also a liar and fantasist. What makes a man like Tristan? If that’s even his real name. Nick and Philly are both in love with him. Unfortunately, they know nothing about the existence of the other.
Why do we fall for the Tristans of this world? What makes us vulnerable to their charms? Tristan offers both Nick and Philly a vision of a future more attractive and romantic than the lives they are currently living. Only when they both end up in the same room, will they discover the lie they have been sold.
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That Witch
Book, Music & Lyrics: Billy Cullum & Robert Tregoning
Director: Jess Edwards
The Sunny High Drama Club present the world premiere read through slash workshop performance of their original musical That Witch, based on totally unbelievable events that like, actually happened in their home town – SunnyVille. Witches are SO not welcome in SunnyVille, but when Olivia, a lonely new girl with hidden powers arrives, queen bee Taylor feels that Sunny High life as she knows it is under threat. Taylor will do whatever it takes to protect her social status…but is the real enemy hiding in plain sight? And when Olivia steps into her truth and meets others like her, will she finally find her tribe?
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The Guild: The Musical
Based on the original series by Felicia Day
Book: Allison Frasca
Music: Mark Schenfisch
Lyrics: Sam Balzac
Director: Dean Johnson
It was so much easier being friends before they ever met…
Cyd Sherman thrives on killing monsters with her band of online friends. Getting groceries and remembering to go to therapy? Not so much.
She and her guildmates are blissfully isolated from each other until one member breaks digital anonymity. Suddenly, Cyd is forced to overcome her own fears and unite the Guild to battle anxieties, miscommunication, and the biggest boss of all: reality.
Adapted from the cult classic webseries by Felicia Day, The Guild: The Musical features infectious tunes, rambunctious comedy, and Day reprising her role as Cyd/Codex.
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GLIMMER
Book & Lyrics: Frankie Bunce
Music & Lyrics: Kat Kleve
GLIMMER is a dark, adrenaline-fuelled new musical set in Bristol, 2025. Burnt-out from carrying responsibilities far beyond her years, Billie is desperate to be seen - until one doom-scroll leads her to Anakiss, a magnetic influencer preaching radical self-belief through small acts of revenge she calls “glimmers.” When her online world begins to bleed into real life, Billie’s transformation sparks a dangerous chain of irreversible consequences. With a pulsing pop score and a razor-sharp look at influencer culture, GLIMMER dives into digital radicalisation, exploring power, pain, and the price of being heard.
