The Guild at MTFest UK in The Other Palace

When Claire invited me to see The Guild, as apart of the MTFest UK, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I’ve been to a large number of plays and performances in my time, but this one marketed itself as a 1-hour workshop, where the actors were doing a live reading. The Guild is a musical, based on a series that is all about meeting up with virtual friends outside of the internet, to see how you all get on.

This bite-sized version of the whole play was in The Other Palace, which is a small, intimate theatre. It all sort of linked together! They were doing a bunch of these workshops as a way to support actors and writers in the earliest form of creating a stage show, which is really lovely idea. This entire week was dedicated to these events, so it was very neat to get along with one. Claire is a big fan of the main actor in The Guild, having seen the series it was based on, so she was pumped. I had not, but was excited to go along! The seats were first come, first serve around the bottom flower of the venue – very cosy and close together – but we had a fantastic view.

I must say, The Guild really blew me away. Sure, there wasn’t stage changes or costumes switched out, or even full aspects of the story as this was a shortened version – but the talent and the writing was on full show. They had a small band on stage (a drummer and a piano player), along with lots of stands to hold individual’s line books and microphones for them to talk into. You see, this was sort of like being in a fancy dress rehearsal. The actors were still following their scripts, but this didn’t take away from any of the magic. At some points, they even use the stands as a part of the show, moving them around and tinkering with them.

There were, of course, lots of references to us not being able to see things – which were weaved into the parts that the actors were playing. At one point, one person started singing a long song, and the main character; Cyd, said “we don’t have time for that whole number, this is the one hour version of the show!”, which was very funny. The entire storyline of a bunch of friends needing to meet in real life, gamify their life to get better at various issues, and then have a sort of party was a lot of fun. The Guild really had so many funny moments, fantastic singing, and it felt just good. There was something so wholesome and intimate about watching such a fun, condensed version of something much bigger.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!