Love Actually? The musical Parody

Love Actually, a well-known, and sometimes loved romantic comedy that plays with nine narratives about different aspects of love deserves a send up. This company inserts some musical numbers based on well-known songs, rolling jokes, lots of references to musical theatre and other movies the actors from Love Actually (the actual movie!) have stared in and they deliver a good to laugh at and entertaining show.

The six actors (Ian Andrew, Belinda Jenkin, Mitchell Groves, Jeremy Harland, Sophie Loughran, Massimo Zuccara) work very hard to create a fast pace with incessant scene and costume changes. They are absolutely on top of accents and mannerisms of the actors in the film and, to help out the audience, they use the name of the actors throughout.

The show hits some of crucial moments of the film, magnifies some and almost misses others.

There is quite an emphasis on explicit sexual movements – surely even baguettes deserve a bit of a warm up. Unlike the film, the two characters whose focus is sex are given a lot of stage time.

The staging, including a floor to ceiling tinsel curtain, a Christmas tree, a couple of doors and a table on wheels are used effectively to create the many different settings from the film.

The music and lighting add to the clever staging. There was a sound balance problem at the beginning with the band drowning out the singers, but this was settled after a couple of songs.

If you know the movie, you’ll find this a light hearted, dumbed down, somewhat critical but entertaining version.

Ruth Richter