Theatre 2025: Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical - Royal Cinema

After watching over 30 plays this year, our last show of 2025 is another Christmas-themed play with the unwieldy, self-explanatory title “Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical”. My husband Rich chose this show so I went with a bit of scepticism, since we did not enjoy some of his Yuletide picks from previous years including “The Christmas Tea” and “The Wizard of Oz” Christmas panto, which didn’t quite hold up without the influence of Ross Petty.  But I can’t resist any new musical, so off we went.

To prepare for this latest show, we front-loaded our Christmas viewing starting in late November by watching a slew of “Hallmark Christmas movies”.  These are all variations of the same plot, a small subset of the “boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back” Rom Com trope.  In the Hallmark Christmas movies, the story obviously happens around Christmas time, the girl with a high-powered or at least white-collared job comes from the big city to a charming little town/village and falls in love with the local carpenter/contractor/fireman/cop/solider, etc. and decides to stay.  Even the same actors get recycled from movie to movie including past B-list stars like Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf from Party of Five or soap opera stars like Hunter King (Young and Restless) and Ryan Paevey. (General Hospital).

I am happy to report that Rich finally picked a holiday winner!  Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical is a fun show with original songs that both advance and spoof the plot of a typical Hallmark Christmas movie. The entire cast has great singing voices and gives hilarious performances with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. The costumes are appropriately festive with lots of red and green and ugly Christmas sweaters.  What really stood out was the video backdrop that set the scenes, from the skyscrapers in Big City to the airplane and highway scenes traveling to and arriving at the quaintness of Small Town with its general store and snow-glistened trees.  This extensive use of video is quite apropos since the show is staged inside Royal Cinema, an Art Moderne movie house and event space built in 1939.

Introduced with an ensemble number titled “Big City”, the heroine, aptly named “Holly”, is the powerful businesswoman who lives in “Big City” working for “Big Bank” and is spearheading “Big Merger” with a Chinese bank.  When she learns that her mother Merry has heart issues and is overworked from running 12 companies in “Small Town”, Holly decides to return to her hometown to help her mother, singing “Going Home For Christmas” as she travels.  Holly turns over responsibility for Big Merger to her co-worker and quirky best friend Martha, another stereotypical role in Hallmark movies. Martha is played by the versatile Luke Witt in one of the many outlandish wigs that he dons in portraying a variety of characters including townswomen and a shady cookie contest judge.

Once in Small Town, Holly runs into her hunky high school sweetheart, Mark Hall, who is the town sheriff/Christmas Tree Farm owner/widower with a young daughter that he repeatedly forgets about.  Exaggerating the characteristics of the typical Hallmark movie male lead which emphasize emotional intelligence over book-smarts, Mark is portrayed as kind-hearted but a total idiot, to great comedic effect.  While the sexual attraction and spark is there, Holly becomes more and more aware of his lack of intelligence.  Mark explains how his wife died in the hilarious song “Ballad of Jenny” which feigns several false conclusions as to the cause of her demise (car crash, oven gas leak, etc.) before it is revealed that she died after ignoring her severe gluten allergy in order to make and consume “real Christmas cookies”.

Holly and Merry sing a duet titled “Love or Career” that cuts to the chase of the major dilemma of many Hallmark movies.  In many of these movies, the woman is made to feel guilty for prioritizing work and career over affairs of the heart.  This musical refreshingly subverts that decision with Holly deciding that instead of following her heart, she will follow her brain, which she declares with the song “I Choose Me”.

The arc of the musical which focuses on the love story between the two romantic leads is very satisfying and spoofs the tropes perfectly.  What worked less for me was the over-the-top subplot of Merry and her former best friend turned rival Cookie in a grudge match over a cookie contest that has been rigged in Cookie’s favour for years.  This satirizes the many movies that feature cookie baking contests including a “Cookie Cutter Christmas” or “A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe”.  In the musical, Cookie comes across as a sneering, Cruella de Ville lookalike with dark arched eyebrows who blackmails a crooked judge into voting for her annually. 

Cookie does get to sing a pair of great songs including the jazzy “Cookie Doesn’t Crumble” and another song where she lists a slew of different types of cookies (gingerbread, shortbread, thumbprint, etc.).  The tune and cadence of the song sounded so familiar and it took me a few minutes to realize that this was a homage to the song “Joseph’s Coat” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat which has the lyrics “It was red and yellow and green and Brown and blue”.  This is just one of multiple popular musical references or Easter eggs hidden throughout the show.  At the finale of one song, Cookie climbs onto a chair with arms spread and a green light shines on her, as if she is singing the last notes in “Defying Gravity” from Wicked.  Rich also thought he noticed quick dance poses that reminded him of Bob Fosse or the musical Chicago.

In midst of the whole cookie judging scandal, Matt’s moose Bruce got loose leading to a scene in the forest with flashlights as everyone is out looking for him while singing “A Moose Is Loose”.  While the song is said to be reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss musical, the choreography reminded me of mystery musicals like Curtains where characters are creeping around in the dark.  In another scene in the forest when Holly and Mark are trying to kiss, the introduction of singing and dancing Christmas trees changed the tone of the show away from a rom com, veering it more into more of a cartoonish affair.  I would have preferred if the plot stuck to parodying the Hallmark Christmas movies, but this is a minor nit.

From generalizing “Big City” and “Small Town” to playing on every Hallmark Christmas Movie Trope and then further exaggerating or even subverting it, this musical does an excellent job of skewering what is a guilty pleasure for many people each holiday season.  We left smiling, happy and wishing that a soundtrack would be released for the delightful songs.  Hopefully this show will tour and will return each Christmas season.