The Other Palace & Turbine Theatre announce MTFestUK 2024 will be showcasing eight new musicals over a two week period, 30 January – 11 February, across both The Other Palace Studio and The Turbine Theatre.
MTFestUK is a unique festival that provides a platform to showcase new and exciting musical theatre. This year eight new productions will be workshopped and presented in ‘sharing’ sessions allowing audiences to come and support, explore, engage and enjoy new musical theatre in its earliest stages of development.
Paul Taylor Mills, Artistic Director at The Other Palace and The Turbine Theatre said: “We are thrilled MTFestUK continues to support and showcase such a broad range of new musical theatre writing at both The Other Palace and The Turbine Theatre. Several MTFestUK pieces have gone on to fully staged productions, which is a testament to the function of both theatres to provide space and support to allow new work to be explored.”
Each piece will be cast and rehearsed, before holding four sharing performances in workshop format, open to audiences. This year’s pieces include a diverse range of titles and themes, from a wide range of different authors and composers including:
MTFestUK at The Other Palace
A Jaffa Cake Musical
Written by Sam Cochrane
Arrangements by Rob Gathercole
Inspired by the 1991 tribunal which determined the true identity of a Jaffa Cake, the multi-award winning Gigglemug Theatre (Timpson: The Musical, RuneSical, Scouts! The Musical) bring you a brand new family-friendly musical comedy about the nation’s favourite cake (I mean, biscuit…?).
Both
Music and Lyrics by Declan Bennett and Olivia Broadfield
Book by Declan Bennett
A delicately powerful and intimate new musical that whispers the end into the limelight. When love doesn’t last for the forever it foretold, who will we choose to be? When our Both becomes one, will we fight or are we gone? When we’re Both up against the wall, do we give up or give it all?
Tit Swingers
Book, Music and Lyrics by Abey Bradbury and Sam Kearney-Edwardes
Anne Bonney and Mary Read: polyamorous queer pirates named the Hellcats of the Seven Seas for their various vicious and notorious crimes…who fought with their tits out. The Tit Swingers are here to write their own sea shanties in a new punk gig musical.
Plastered
Book, Music and Lyrics by Randy Rogel
Developed / Co-created by BT McNicholl
Directed by Jerry Zaks
Another little shop, another big problem. At a ‘50s San Francisco coffee house, a struggling beatnik sculptor accidentally creates a new style of art that thrusts him into fame and fortune as trouble mounts…. in this twisted killer comedy musical!
MTFestUK at The Turbine Theatre
ROMY AND MICHELE The Musical
Written by the film’s screenwriter Robin Schiff
Score by Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay
Directed by Kristin Hanggi
Pop culture’s most lovable and quotable best friends are back, and this time they’re bringing their misadventures to the stage in the new musical comedy. ROMY AND MICHELE The Musical is an absolute feel-good joyride and the best thing to happen since the invention of Post-Its®.
Bling
Music and Lyrics by Elliot Clay
Book by Tori Allen-Martin
It’s 2008, season two of ‘The Kardashians’ is airing, Britney’s made her comeback and a group of teenagers are about to steal $3 million worth of belongings from Hollywood celebrity’s homes. Inspired by unbelievably true events, this darkly comic pop-opera lampoons noughties culture and asks how and why they did it… O.M.G!!!
Redcliffe
Written by Jordan Luke Gage
Directed by Josh Seymour
Based on the true events of William Critchard and Richard Arnold in 1753, Redcliffe is an epic tale of forbidden love in spite during the persecution people faced for hundreds of years.
The Garden
Music, Book, Lyrics by Chisara Agor
Orchestration by Robin G Breeze
When a sprawling magical garden grows overnight on Azalea’s estate, Azalea and her friends connect within it to unite the community, healing neighbourly strife and familial bonds. The Garden is an exciting, magical-realist, afro-electric-folk musical which sheds light on the need for social housing, nature and love.
