Home Alone 2’s copy-paste plot becomes the joke of a camp London stage parody

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York may be the most candid sequel Hollywood ever made about being a sequel. Chris Columbus took his hit about a boy left behind at Christmas, moved it from a Chicago suburb to Manhattan and ran the same machine again: a forgotten child, two hapless burglars, a gauntlet of traps, a lonely stranger who turns out to be kind. Jodie Prenger and Neil Hurst, the writing partnership behind the camp Christmas parodies at The Other Palace in London, have plainly noticed. Their new show puts the confession in its title: A Homo Alone 2: Yikes, We Did It Again!

The joke follows the film’s own blueprint. Kevin McCallister, now billed as older, camper and still unsupervised, lands alone in New York, which the producers call the gayest place on Earth, with his father’s credit card in hand. The burglars are back, the hotel manager arrives as a Rocky Horror-style creation (a fitting nod, since the concierge in the film was played by Tim Curry), and the film’s brief cameo by Donald Trump, who owned the Plaza Hotel when it was shot, gets its own send-up.

Thomas John Stocks as Kevin, Jermaine Woods, Charlotte Dixon and Jenny Bede in costume for A Homo Alone 2 — Thomas John Stocks, Jermaine Woods, Charlotte Dixon and Jenny Bede in A Homo Alone 2. Image: Tyrone Lewis / The Other Palace

The casting leans on multi-rolling, the oldest trick shared by British pantomime and fringe parody. Thomas John Stocks plays Kevin. Jenny Bede, seen in Prince Andrew: The Musical, takes on Kevin’s mum, the Bird Woman and Cedric the bellboy. Jermaine Woods, from The Producers, plays Kevin’s dad, the burglar Harry and the hotel manager, while Charlotte Dixon covers Buzz, Marv and the Trump cameo, a piece of casting the announcement presents with an audible sigh.

This is the pair’s third festive parody at the venue. The original Homo Alone sold out its run in 2024, and last winter’s Lovers Actually became The Other Palace Studio’s best-selling show ever. Prenger, known to television audiences as Glenda Shuttleworth on Coronation Street and to West End audiences for Oliver! at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, says in the announcement that this Kevin is older and more mischievous and has been left to his own devices once more, “a bit like the writing team”. Newcomers who missed the first instalment will not be lost, she promises, though “sweet childhood memories may be at risk.”

Hurst, an actor and award-winning pantomime performer whose credits include Fat Friends The Musical and Casualty, has written with Prenger since A Very Very Bad Cinderella. Direction comes from the comedian Laura Checkley, best known for Detectorists, with choreography by Philip Michael Thomas, musical direction and arrangements by Tom Noyes, design by Reuben Speed, lighting by Matt Hockley and sound by Tom Jervis.

The venue has a long memory of its own. The Palace Street building near Victoria began life in 1766 as the Charlotte Chapel, became the Westminster Theatre in 1931 and now uses its studio to launch new musical theatre.

A Homo Alone 2: Yikes, We Did It Again! runs at The Other Palace Studio from 13 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, with press night on Wednesday 18 November. It runs about two hours with an interval; previews cost from £28 and the main run from £36.

Hollywood made the same film twice and called it a sequel. Prenger and Hurst are doing it on purpose, and printing the admission on the poster.

Tags: The Other Palace, A Homo Alone 2: Yikes, We Did It Again!, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Jenny Bede, Jodie Prenger, Laura Checkley