Stage spoofs of Hallmark TV movies are Christmas gifts for theaters

[December 17, 2024]  By TERRY TANG

PHOENIX (AP) — A career woman from the big city gets stranded in a quaint town just before Christmas but somehow finds love on the holiday with a prince in disguise ... or a high school crush ... or a widowed father.

Sounds like a plot line from a Hallmark Channel holiday movie? This Christmas, stories like this are also playing out off-screen on theater stages around the country. As spoofs.

While a lot of theater companies are dusting off traditional chestnuts like “A Christmas Carol” or "White Christmas,” some are tackling the TV Christmas rom-com. Almost like a plot from Hallmark's playbook, regional and community theaters are putting on a festive show. But these are gentle send-ups of the films and all their cheesy spirit.

Love ‘em or hate ’em, formulaic meet-cute holiday flicks have become as tied to the yuletide as ugly sweaters and hot chocolate. Theater directors say the movies have a universal appeal since most audiences can recognize the story beats. And judging by the high ticket sales, these parodies are gaining a holly jolly reception.

Meet our stars, Holly, Joy and Carol

Ghostlight Theatre, a community theater in the Phoenix suburb of Sun City West, is presenting "The Holiday Channel Christmas Movie Wonderthon,” by Don Zolidis. The story juggles six different would-be couples at the same Vermont inn.

They all represent archetypes, from the movie star seeking anonymity to a Christmas-themed shop proprietor. All the female characters have holiday-ish names like Holly, Joy and Carol. In one funny twist, real-life husband and wife Michael and GinaKay Howell play one of the couples. She says the experience has been “the greatest Christmas present.” Their courtship banter, however, was nothing like in the play.

“There are moments where I’m like, ‘What? What are we even saying?’” laughed Michael, who plays the prince of a fictitious country with a “Borat”-like accent. “It really hit the nail on the head of everything that Hallmark stands for and then, like, makes fun of it."

Zach Athanasakis, the director, emphasized to the 16-member cast that much of the humor depends on them saying their lines with a straight face.

“A lot of these lines are very, very corny and you have to be able to say it with your chest and really, truly embody how much weight that holds for the character in it — no matter how silly it is,” Athanasakis said.

Laura Vines, Ghostlight's executive director and co-founder, had been looking for something “that would kind of set us apart” in metro Phoenix. She read in a Facebook group that another community theater had found a hit in “Wonderthon.” Economically, the show doesn't break the bank to stage.

“It actually in the script calls for everybody to just wear red and green sweaters. We're doing something a little bit different, but it's kind of along those lines,” Vines said.

Five gol-den rings! And an audience embrace

The day before Thanksgiving, Broadway Rose Theatre Company in Tigard, Oregon, unwrapped “Five Golden Rings: A Greeting Card Channel Holiday Musical.” This show, by Stephen Garvey with songs by David Abbinanti, also takes place in a Vermont bed-and-breakfast with a protagonist named Holly. She's a business executive who falls for the “hunky lumberjack widower” owner of the B&B, said the director, Dan Murphy.

The regional theater, which employs 250 people, has built a reputation for choosing shows “off the beaten path," says Murphy, a founding member. He really felt good about the choice when he saw the reactions across age groups.

Narrators Kayla Patnod, right, and William Buckley introduce a scene during a dress rehearsal for the production of "The Holiday Channel Christmas Movie Wonderthon" at the Ghostlight Theatre in Sun City West, Ariz., on Dec. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

“This last weekend we had a group of donors come in and watch rehearsals and they were laughing at some of the jokes,” Murphy said. “The crew, they are interns from high school seniors to college. They come in and watch a rehearsal. They were laughing hysterically."

At both theaters, most performances for the Hallmark spoofs have sold out.

Murphy thinks people are looking for something different but still multigenerational. Plus, tried-and-true favorites like “The Nutcracker” and “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical” will be around every December.

“It might scare some theaters. For us doing this, it’s a risk that we’re taking that’s totally paying off,” Murphy said.

Some theaters set the action in their own quaint town

The Williamston Theatre in Williamston, Michigan, is reviving an original play by John Lepard, a founding member of the company, who binged 15 Hallmark Christmas movies, taking notes, and then sat down to write “A Very Williamston Christmas” in 2022.

“The reason I wrote this is because my wife found something on YouTube, like a three-minute spoof," Lepard said. "She said, ‘You should write something like this for the theater.’”

It took him about a month to knock out a script. He used the nom de plume Robert Hawlmark, thus making it a “Hawlmark original.” The play is a love letter to Williamston, which has a population just over 3,800. The corporate career gal comes home from the big city of Lansing, the state capital 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the north.

“A lot of people said seeing our town get to be in a Hallmark movie was really fun,” said Lepard, who is directing.

But the play's appeal isn't limited to Williamston. Lepard has gotten requests to license it to theaters elsewhere in Michigan, and in Texas and Colorado. They could rejigger it like a Mad Libs game, he said, and “just plug in your town, your local antique store and all the things local to your place.”

The source material is treated fondly

Hallmark is on board with these stage shows satirizing their “vibrant, beloved storytelling style.”

“It makes sense to us that it’s leapt off the screen and onto the stage," Samantha DiPippo, senior vice president of programming, said in a statement. In the plays, she said, "people are finding fun ways to emulate our signature messages of hope, love, humor, and meaningful connection in their own communities.”

The send-ups gently jab at the movies — not the movie-watchers, Athanasakis made clear. Both those who relish and those who roll their eyes at Hallmark Christmas fodder will have a good laugh.

The goal, he says, is being able to poke fun “in a way that’s not necessarily disrespectful to Hallmark movies, but in a way that it takes those jokes and just makes them that much bigger” on the stage.

“In a movie, you still want to keep a sense of realism," he said. "In a show like this, you don’t have to.”

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