How Dylan MarcAurele and Alan Kliffer Made ‘Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody‘ Sing
Adapting that resonance from six hour-long episodes into a 75-minute show was ambitious, but Dylan MarcAurele’s technique was simple: make lists. He wrote down everything he knew about hockey, Canada, and Russia, as well as sexual puns and double entendres.
Reported by Vogue.
There is something almost suspicious about how fast Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody came together. Playwright Dylan MarcAurele wrote the music, lyrics, and book — all of it — before the sixth episode of the HBO series had even aired, completing a full score in three weeks. When a concert performance was announced, it sold out in 14 hours, before a single cast member had been named. The show is now extended through Labor Day, according to Vogue. Not bad for a 75-minute parody of a slow-burn gay hockey romance.
The source material is Heated Rivalry, the Canadian series adapted from Rachel Reid's bestselling novels, following two professional hockey players navigating a secret relationship across six hour-long episodes and eight years of plot. MarcAurele's stage version — directed by his longtime friend Alan Kliffer — compresses all of that longing into classic musical-theater structure, narrated by a Greek chorus of three Midwestern wine moms, all named Susan, played by Ryann Redmond, Cherry Torres, and Ryan Duncan. Their opening anthem lays out the premise with surgical clarity: "Gay hockey players with big butts / Having sex in their beds / Sucking dick, but they're sad." Golden Age pastiche has never been deployed more efficiently.
The Comedy Is the Sincerity
The laughs come from friction — explicit subject matter forced into the formal architecture of traditional musical theater — but what's made the show land is that it also means it. "The butts and the sex are the draw initially," MarcAurele says, "but it's the emotional resonance that has made it take off." The ballad "This Fuck Was Different Than the Last Fuck" is reportedly reminiscent of "The Boy Next Door" from Meet Me in St. Louis — starry-eyed, genuinely tender, played completely straight. Kliffer, whose background includes artistic director roles at The Second City and Asylum NYC, threads improv throughout, giving the production a deliberate looseness that the audience clearly welcomes. Five actors carry the entire show, pulling off instant costume changes, sometimes mid-scene.
MarcAurele is no stranger to parody — his credits include MEG4N, The Real Housewives of NYC: The Parody Musical, and Pop Off, Michaelangelo! — and he approaches the form with the same rigor he'd apply to original work. His process involved compiling obsessive Google Docs: lists of hockey slang, Canadian and Russian cultural touchstones, sexual puns, double entendres, and tropes that move him across any genre. The result sits comfortably alongside Broadway's current wave of queer, campy send-ups — Titanique, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Schmigadoon! — productions Kliffer frames as a genuine cultural moment. "We need joy and comedy and connection," he says. "The best thing we could do is be together and laugh." The fans who attend already understand this: they cheer in anticipation of iconic lines before they're even spoken.
When a piece of IP inspires real-life look-alike-contest couples and Heated Rivalry-themed raves, the parody almost writes itself — but it still takes someone willing to write it fast, write it well, and treat a fandom's devotion as something worth honoring rather than just mining.
Read the original at Vogue.
