The English Beat books Menlo Park's Guild Theatre for March

Dave Wakeling's 2-Tone band brings its ska-pop to the restored 1926 movie house on Saturday, March 20, 2027.

Picture a hundred-year-old movie palace on El Camino with the seats full and nobody sitting in them. That's the likely scene on Saturday, March 20, 2027, when The English Beat plays The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park. The show starts at 8 p.m., and tickets are on sale now through OpenDate. The date was announced October 27.

The Guild holds about 500, which is a small room for a band with this kind of legacy and a good one for its sound. 2-Tone ska was music for dancing in tight quarters. It gets lost in a shed or an amphitheater. In a room this size, a band like this can feel close.

The band is led by singer Dave Wakeling, and the University of Sheffield's venue announcement this year described it plainly as a "legendary 2-Tone group." In the UK the billing reads The Beat starring Dave Wakeling. In the U.S. it's The English Beat. Either way it's the same voice out front. Wakeling has stayed busy in 2026. This fall he led the Dance Crazed Too tour across the UK: 21 dates opening October 1 at the HMV Empire in Coventry and stopping at London's O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire and Birmingham Town Hall. According to the Coventry listing, The Selecter, fronted by Pauline Black, shared the bill, and Rhoda Dakar played DJ sets. A tour built like that is a statement that this music still draws a crowd at home. By March, Wakeling will be bringing a band that has just spent a season playing it every night.

2-Tone ska was music for dancing in tight quarters.

The room has a story worth knowing before you go. The Guild opened as the Menlo Theatre on May 6, 1926, according to Cinema Treasures, and showed films for 93 years before closing on September 6, 2019. A lot of people on the Peninsula expected that to be the end of it. Instead the Peninsula Arts Guild, a nonprofit founded in 2017 by Menlo Park resident Drew Dunlevie, took on a renovation of about $35 million to turn the single-screen house into a concert hall. Local News Matters covered the reopening in early 2022. ProSoundWeb reported the new Meyer Sound system, and for a band whose records live on bass and offbeat guitar, that matters. This year the Almanac covered the Guild's centennial concert series, marking a hundred years since the building first opened.

So a March show here means a band that has been at it for decades in a room that just turned a hundred and came back from the edge to do it. There's something fitting there. The Peninsula has lost plenty of its old theaters and clubs, and the Guild is one of the few that got a second act. The English Beat is a band that has kept its first act going long past the point most groups would have quit.

There's no price listed yet in our data, so check OpenDate for current tiers. Menlo Park on a Saturday night makes for an easy evening: dinner on Santa Cruz Avenue, a short walk to the theater, then a couple of hours on your feet.

Wear shoes you can dance in. This isn't a sit-down show, whatever the building used to be.

Sources: The Beat – Coventry HMV Empire listing (Dance Crazed Too) – Skiddle (skiddle.com); Legendary 2-Tone group The bEAT, led by vocalist Dave Wakeling, have announced Dance Crazed Too – University of Sheffield Performance Venues (performancevenues.group.shef.ac.uk); The Beat – Dance Crazed Too UK Tour – Middlesbrough Box Office (boxoffice.middlesbrough.gov.uk); Guild Theatre – Cinema Treasures (cinematreasures.org); Renovated Guild Theatre brings live music to downtown Menlo Park – Local News Matters (localnewsmatters.org); A behind-the-scenes look as Menlo Park's Guild Theatre transforms into a concert venue – The Almanac (almanacnews.com); Meyer Sound heads up the audio at reinvented Guild Theater – ProSoundWeb (prosoundweb.com); The Guild's centennial concert series – The Almanac (almanacnews.com); The English Beat tickets – OpenDate (app.opendate.io); The English Beat at The Guild Theatre – JamBase (jambase.com)