The Toronto Theatre Review: The Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical!

By Ross

With a sleighful of holiday cheer and a sardonic wink as wide as a big merger in the big city, The Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical arrives at The Royal Theatre, where it leans hard into the Lifetime movie tropes we all know and love(ish). The big-city career woman, the big business deal that has to be signed by midnight on Christmas Eve, the small-town sweetheart, the suspiciously high-stakes cookie contest, and of course, the inevitable triumph of community over capitalism, it’s all there, laid out like a gingerbread man ready for consumption in 75 brisk minutes. The show knows exactly what it wants to be: a fizzy seasonal spoof played out big and sassy, with a wee dash of ridiculous whipped cream on that hot chocolate. And it delivers all that with enough warmth and charm to keep the room glowing bright, even when the production and its constructs, unfortunately, struggle to keep up.

There’s no question that the beating heart of the evening is the cast, who commit to the comedy with big grins, many jobs, and buckets full of energy. Alexandra Clement (BMT’s Hairspray) as Holly gives us a strong blend of Broadway polish and rom-com self-awareness, grounding the silliness of the situations without ever dragging it down. As Cookie, Heidi Michelle Thomas (Hart House’s The Rocky Horror Show) steals pretty much every scene she stomps into, firing off jokes like tinsel cannons and somehow making even the most ludicrous plot points feel like an essential holiday tradition. And Luke Witt (NCL’s Pour House), as the multi-dimensional sidekicks, Cody & Martha, adds a slightly unhinged, delightful, and unexpected frosted fizz that lifts the entire ensemble every time he enters, regardless of what wig he is wearing. This is a company that knows how to sell a punchline and treat the audience as co-conspirators, not bystanders. And we are all there for it, as we watch Holly take flight and make her way home for the holidays.

The songs are delightful, and completely wacky in their wonderful way of sounding big and delicious like the songs of Hairspray, and also finding the ridiculously funny in songs about death and duplicity. The music by Joel Waggoner (School of Rock), with lyrics by Waggoner, director Tim Drucker (Public’s Advent Carolindar), and the amazing Tony-Award-winning Bonnie Milligan, leans fully into the absurdity of the genre, delivering pop-infused bops that knowingly skewer the syrupy scenarios of these holiday films. Numbers like “Love or Career” and the very on-the-nose “It Feels Like Christmas Because It Is Literally Christmas” brought some of the night’s biggest laughs, not because the jokes were subtle, oh no, but because the performers sold them like they were handing us something precious and beautifully wrapped. Even when the book is thinner than a Christmas cookie, the cast handles it as though every moment is a holiday gift exchange.

If only the theatre’s technical setup could match that enthusiastic spirit. The projections, designed by Taylor Edelle Stuart, work hard, and occasionally succeed, in giving us the cinematic sparkle the script calls for, but the venue’s limitations are impossible to ignore. Sound cues, designed by Soohong Cho, land inconsistently; the lighting by Jason Schneider sometimes struggles to follow the comedy’s pace, and the projection system feels more aspirational than fully functional. None of this sinks the show, but it does highlight how much cookie dough weight the performers, and choreographers Brooke Engen and Tiffany Engen, are carrying on their talented shoulders.

Still, there’s something undeniably joyful about watching a company commit so wholeheartedly to holiday chaos and silliness. The parody lands more often than not, and while the plot is closer to store-bought Christmas cookies than homemade, the charm of the performances, including Sean Meldrum as dimwitted but handsome small-town Mark, and mother Merry, played by Emily Richardson, goes a long way. You leave remembering the antics and the camaraderie onstage, the jokes that landed, the character holiday namesakes, the sense of seasonal shtick that only a knowingly ridiculous Christmas musical can deliver, well-sung cheer, and a joyously dumb threat of a moose on the loose that is as ridiculous as it sounds.

The Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical! may not reinvent the gingerbread wheel, but it embraces its own campy spirit with style. For audiences looking for a spirited, self-aware holiday romp, and a cast that knows exactly how to whip a good time out of even the thinnest eggnog, it’s a cheerful way to kick off the season. Next year, I’d love to see it rise in a more solidly festive and technically solid staging, where the holiday spirit that lives within its Hairspray-esque sound could truly shine as bright as Rudolph’s nose.