'Lovers Actually' review — this indecently funny musical spoof of the classic film is a joyful festive pick-me-up

Read our review of Lovers Actually, written by Neil Hurst and Jodie Prenger, now in performances at The Other Palace to 4 January 2026.

Summary

• Lovers Actually is an affectionate musical spoof of the classic Richard Curtis film Love Actually
• Characters include a fresh take on Hugh Grant's lovesick prime minister and Bill Nighy's ageing rock star
• Neil Hurst and Jodie Prenger's hilarious script also riffs on Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Can it really be 22 years since Love Actually cast Hugh Grant as a lovesick prime minister in pursuit of Martine McCutcheon, and Emma Thompson had us weeping in sympathy with her dastardly treatment at the hands of Alan Rickman? These scenarios exist in addition to a half-dozen or more others that are scattered across a famously starry cast.

Apparently so, though the winning Lovers Actually, a decided pick-me-up for the festive season, feels so freshly inventive that it has the effect of bringing the intervening decades into the here and now. From much the same team as last Christmas’s satiric divertissement at this same venue – the similarly film-inspired Homo Alone – Lovers Actually is rude, crude and indecently funny, even if references to ruby-encrusted butt plugs and the like suggest that you might want to leave your maiden aunt at home.

The film’s panoply of characters here fall to four performers, who work tirelessly to honour Richard Curtis’s celluloid source – itself dogged by criticism in recent years for a heteronormative lack of diversity and overabundant schmaltz. Lovers Actually is, well, actually quite sweet, not least for playgoers who don’t mind the use of “Cockfosters” as an expletive and passing references to Sweeney Nob, the musical Stephen Sondheim never wrote.

We kick off with Joseph Beach channelling his inner Bill Nighy as Billy Mack, the gravelly rock star here presented as “the festive prophet of debauchery”. As the days count down towards Christmas, the actors shift roles on a dime. Barely has one clocked the wonderful Holly Sumpton as a the Joni Mitchell-loving Karen (Thompson’s screen role) before the performer is seen afresh as Aurelia – the Portuguese cleaner from the film.

Sumpton also pops up now and again as a deliberately badly wigged Donald Trump, who is seen arriving for a state visit. “Jump”, the Pointer Sisters song fondly remembered from the film, here acquires a politically adjacent rhyme that wasn’t part of the political landscape (thank heavens) back then.

You sense the cast’s delight in the performative sleight-of-hand that Alex Jackson’s nimble production demands. Martha Pothen's assignments include the sweary tea lady Tiffany one minute, and the male companion, Peter, to Sumpton’s Juliet (Kiera Knightley onscreen) the next. Possessed of a strong set of pipes, Pothen, seen recently upstairs at this same address in 50 First Dates: The Musical, deserves a starring role soon.

Ross Clifton is an absolute hoot as a PM hailing from, yes, “Tosspotfordshire” – get it? – and as a lank-haired, Hogwarts-adjacent Alan Rickman with a gift for improv: “Lovely wallpaper,” he says of Louie Whitemore’s set, to cover some onstage corpsing. Beach couples Billy Mack with arguably the show’s most unhinged assignment as a gun-crazed Liam Neeson, with wild eyes to match.

You’ve got to admire the audacity of a script from Neil Hurst and Jodie Prenger that can riff on Stormy Daniels and Elon Musk whilst neatly letting slip that “nothing compares to the sweet scent of poppers this close to Christmas” (noted). I admit to wincing at the rewrite of one of my favourite of all carols – “in her cheeks mid-sphincter” – but the jokes come sufficiently thick and fast that there’s scant time to linger on matters of taste.

A special callout surely must go to some deft deployment of the audience, which, at the final preview, saw much of the front row pressed into hugely agreeable service – one woman in particular looking as if she was ready to sign on for the rest of the run.

I know how she feels. For all that the production feasts on a take-no-prisoners ribaldry, it very much takes its cue from the red bow perched atop the set. Go in the right frame of mind (and with a cocktail to hand) and Christmas will have come – sorry – before you know it.

Lovers Actually is at The Other Palace to 4 January 2026. Book Lovers Actually tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Lovers Actually (Photos by Pamela Raith)