Lovers Actually at the Other Palace – review

It may be hard to believe that Love Actually, now a perennial Christmas favourite, was derided by critics on its release. The public, however, ignored their musings and turned Richard Curtis’s multi-storied melange of love into a major rom-com commercial success. Now, some 22 years later, courtesy of writers Neil Hurst and Jodie Prenger (creators of Homo Alone and A Very Very Bad Cinderella), it’s being parodied.

Billed as “The ultimate naughty musical parody”, Lovers Actually has a lot to live up to, and the result is a mixed bag. Much like its source material, there’s a lot going on, probably too much. The show reinterprets all the subplots from the film but somehow manages to make the result significantly more fragmented and narratively disjointed. What emerges feels less like a cohesive musical and more like a TV sketch show of serrated set pieces with recurring characters. Anyone unfamiliar with the film is likely to find it a confusing, marginally funny mess. Even fans may struggle to follow the thread.

The saving grace is the ensemble cast. Joseph Beach, Ross Clifton, Martha Pothen and Holly Sumpton ham it up like there’s no tomorrow, delivering enthusiastically over-the-top performances. Remarkably, these four actors tackle all 14 or so key characters from the film, throwing themselves fully into each role and carrying much of the production on their shoulders.

The show is packed with jokes, but how funny you’ll find it depends entirely on your sense of humour. If the idea of taking the Pointer Sisters’ “Jump” (which Hugh Grant famously danced to in the movie) and turning it into an innuendo-laden homage to tea and biscuits (including lines such as “I want to pop his hob nob in my gob” and “I want to dunk my biccie in your brew”) appeals to you, then this is right up your alley. This is unashamedly frat-boy humour.

Prenger and Hurst squeeze around 20 songs into the show, all rewritten with overly suggestive lyrics. Characters from the film are further parodied via the stars who originally played them: Daniel (Liam Neeson in the film) is interpreted as a shouty, gun-loving, vengeance-ridden man; Juliet (Keira Knightley’s character) talks through clenched teeth; and Harry (Alan Rickman) keeps venturing into Hogwarts territory.

Watching Lovers Actually, you can see that the creative team had an absolute blast writing and producing the show, but that doesn’t translate strongly into the final production. Despite its issues, the film was very funny and had a barrelful of heart. Lovers Actually keeps the joke rate high, if not higher, but seems to have sacrificed quality over quantity and, worst of all, replaced the emotional heart with puerility.

Fans of the film will find enough to laugh about, but the experience works best if you approach it as a segmented series of sketches rather than a single narrative. And afterwards, you’ll probably want to rush home and rewatch the original film again.