Big Butts, Minnesota Moms and Slapdash Hockey: Inside the ‘Heated Rivalry' Musical Checking in Off-Broadway

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, perhaps parody, then, is the highest form of respect. At least, such was the ethos behind Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody, a new off-Broadway production satirizing the popular hockey drama that premiered to both critical and popular acclaim at the end of last year.

The show, which officially began its 14-week run on Tuesday, is the brainchild of writer and composer Dylan MarcAurele, who has often found creative inspiration at the intersection of pop culture, comedy and queer identity (his spoof-heavy oeuvre also includes works like The Real Housewives of NYC: The Parody Musical, and MEG4N, a campy take on the popular 2023 horror film M3GAN). So when Crave/HBO Max's Heated Rivalry dominated the zeitgeist at the end of last year, well, he knew before he even watched that he would undoubtedly find himself called to his keyboard yet again.

"I think I identify a lot with Shane's character," MarcAurele tells Sports Illustrated of his draw to the TV series, which was based on the popular books from author Rachel Reid. "There's just this parallel between being gay and being a perfectionist that I kind of relate to, that I just think is so funny and so sad.

"And then I just started to get a kick out of the idea of someone like me writing something all about hockey. Because I think if you see the [musical], it's pretty clear that I'm not a hockey expert, but that I'm having the most fun time writing a musical about hockey."

From the get, MarcAurele assumed he had a small window with which to work before the craze surrounding the show died down. After catching up on the series in late December, he camped out in coffee shops, writing songs, humming melodies and memorializing what he could in voice notes. By March, his efforts culminated in a series of eight pared-down concert readings, wherein the role of Shane Hollander was played by Zach Piser (Piser later left the production to star in Maybe Happy Ending; Jimin Moon would step in in his place) and the role of Ilya Rozanov was played by Jay Armstrong Johnson. The workshops were a hit, and soon, off-Broadway was on the table.

That brings us to now.

In addition to Moon's Shane and Armstrong Johnson's Ilya, MarcAurele's ... unique stage retelling employs three female characters (all conveniently referred to as Susan) to frame the story for the audience. In a hilarious turn, the production starts with them: three wine moms from Minnesota, sipping a chilled white and lamenting how traditional television has failed to deliver what they really want, which, as the chorus of the ensuing song goes on to make clear, is "gay hockey players with big butts having sex." The enemies-to-lovers story we've come to adore unfurls from there.

"It is funny, but it's also a real thing, right?" MarcAurele says of the Susans, who not only set the tone early on but also pay homage to Heated Rivalry's female viewership. "I think a lot of people watched the series in the privacy of their homes or bedrooms on their iPads. I did, and I'm an out gay man. It's this emotional refuge, and I think a romantic and maybe sexual refuge also."

He certainly has a point. The television show, which follows hockey archrivals-turned-lovers Shane and Ilya over the course of a ten-year situationship, did appeal broadly to straight women, and specifically the type who are lovingly lampooned in that opening scene.

"You'd never think it," Heated Rivalry writer/director Jacob Tierney told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2025. "But the baked-in audience for this is women. It's wine moms. They love this stuff. And the thing that is so interesting is that the people that don't know about it are gay men."

Numerous think pieces have since theorized as to why this is, exactly: it could be the story's subversion of heterosexual intimacy, or perhaps an absence of the kind of male "toxicity" that ladies openly abhor. Or, it could just be that women have always been interested in these kinds of romances, and have been reading what was eventually popularized as "slashfic" (or stories with romantic plots between two men) for decades.

"A lot of my female readers prefer to not have a woman in the book because of their own, usually dark pasts with sex with men," Reid, author of the book series, also told The Hollywood Reporter. "They prefer to get lost in a fantasy where there's nobody there that they can relate to directly. They don't want to insert themselves into these sex scenes. It just feels safer."

This fervid fandom in mind, MarcAurele, Moon and Armstrong Johnson took incredible care to treat their parody-which is by definition a pastiche of its source material-with unimpeachable care.

"I totally respect anybody who's like, ‘Oh, I don't want to watch a parody of that show that meant a lot to me,'" MarcAurele said. But, "I think that a lot of people, if they saw the show, would realize that this was written by a huge, huge fan."

Armstrong Johnson's Russian accent is a perfect example of this delicate balance in action. Rather than play it for laughs, MarcAurele insisted that Ilya's line delivery remain as real and as accurate as possible; the point was to avoid making a joke out of it.

"I tried really hard to walk in with, like, a cartoon version of a Russian accent, thinking that it would help the parody, and both Dylan and [director Alan Kliffer] were not into that," Armstrong Johnson told SI, with a laugh. "So I had to get a dialect coach and really work hard at this Russian accent, and it's getting better and better every day."

Where the cast does get to have fun, however, is with the words on the page: lines of dialogue and song lyrics that are, in MarcAurele's own estimation, "bats--- crazy."

For the price of entry, theatergoers can look forward to whimsical ditties like "Gym Song," a tune that soundtracks Ilya and Shane's sweaty encounter in a hotel fitness center, and "Big Ass, Cold Heart," presumably a reference to Rozanov's-er, actor Connor Storrie's-much-discussed behind. And there's also "Shane Hollander Slap That Stick," which … could mean anything, really.

"I want the audience to experience the same emotions as they did when they saw the show or read the book," MarcAurele explained. "So I am constantly advocating in the room for us to treat every emotional beat as completely real, completely truthful."

Of course, that's much easier when your cast is full of Broadway stars, willing to sacrifice character for caricature (albeit, reasonably so). Armstrong Johnson, a seasoned vet with credits like On the Town and Catch Me If You Can, was in between gigs when he decided he had nothing to lose in jumping on board. And Moon, with recent turns in Lempicka, SunsetBoulevard and Aladdin, was mostly just happy to be involved.

"Working with [Armstrong Johnson] is a dream. I mean, he's someone I looked up to when I was in high school," Moon said of their co-star. "So we've been having a blast. We're making each other laugh way too much. We're really, really, really trying to take it super seriously, but we're cracking each other up and having a really good time."

Still, though, it all comes back to a deep admiration for the very thing these actors and MarcAurele are skewering (which, as Moon pointed out, is often levied as a badge of honor in the queer community), and a sound understanding of what that source material means to the world.

"In the chaotic comedy of it all, there's some really tender moments of heart that pay homage to the love that we all have for this series and for the books and for this IP that we all just really respect and want to do our best with," Moon explained.

"And so I think Dylan threads a really beautiful line there of making it funny, making it raucous, making it a great night out for you and your friends, and also, a really sweet, beautiful, touching story at the end of the day, because that's what I think audiences of the show have always really resonated with."

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Big Butts, Minnesota Moms and Slapdash Hockey: Inside the ‘Heated Rivalry' Musical Checking in Off-Broadway.

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This story was originally published May 26, 2026 at 11:30 PM.