Love Actually director Richard Curtis announces Christmas Actually

It goes without saying that Love Actually, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is one of the world’s best-loved Christmas movies.

In fact, just six years ago much of the cast reprised their roles from the classic festive movie for the 2017 short film sequel Red Nose Day Actually, in aid of Comic Relief.

And now director Richard Curtis has today announced Christmas Actually, which won’t be a stage adaptation of Love Actually but a festive theatre show for the charity.

According to the BBC, Christmas Actually will be a variety performance full of live music, poetry and comedy this December.

The filmmaker said: “We hope it’ll be a real chocolate box – or perhaps advent calendar – of delights.”

Curtis has promised audiences that Christmas Actually, which will run for eight performances at the Royal Festival Hall from December 7-11, will be “noisy and emotional and full of surprises and jokes, with some proper celebrity sparkle.”

The director continued: “I remember I didn’t always love the Christmas shows I took my children to, but I always took them to one,. So we thought it would be fun to make a show for Christmas that really is fun for all the family. And then the idea of doing it also to raise money for Comic Relief made the idea irresistible.”

Curtis, who won’t reveal the celebrity guests just yet, added: “We hope to cram a wealth of wonder into 90 noisy minutes. I suspect some members of the audience will go away with presents they weren’t expecting; there’ll definitely be some rowdy singing along and some unexpected famous people will pop up on the screens and even in person.”

The variety show will feature a live band playing Christmas songs, as actors and celebrities “deliver poetry, Christmas cracker jokes and children’s letters to Santa”.

All this will be in front of a backdrop of live illustrations by some well-known artists.

Tickets for Christmas Actually go on sale at 10am BST on Wednesday here.