“Heated Rivalry” and Its Wine-Mom Fans Reunite

Sign up to receive it in your inbox.What’s the only thing that could make “Heated Rivalry” gayer? That’s right: turning it into a musical. Doing the honors is Dylan Marc Aurele, a composer, writer, and parodist extraordinaire, whose previous projects include spoofs of the “Real Housewives” franchise and of the 2022 horror movie “M3gan.” His latest undertaking is “Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody,” which begins previews on May 12, for an eight-week run at the Club, near Hudson Yards.

Illustration by Ricardo DiseñoAs anyone on social media probably knows by now, “Heated Rivalry” is a sex-forward TV show about closeted hockey players. Its first season, based on the “Game Changers” series by Rachel Reid, was released last November and was promoted with steamy clips that quickly blanketed Instagram and TikTok. The show focusses on two young N.H.L. stars playing for different teams: Shane Hollander, an aw-shucks Canadian, and Ilya Rozanov, a standoffish Russian. They gradually progress from furtive hotel-room hookups, when their game schedules intersect, to emotional intimacy and self-acceptance.

The series has attracted attention for, among other things, the size of Ilya’s ass, which, in MarcAurele’s adaptation, is its own character. Filling out the role of Ilya is Jay Armstrong Johnson; Jimin Moon plays Shane; Ryann Redmond plays a wine-mom narrator who lives for their clandestine love. (Women constitute a sizable chunk of the series’ fans; a childhood friend who is now a mother of two persuaded me to keep watching the TV show when I’d given up, after Episode 3.) Audiences can expect such penetrating songs as “This Fuck Was Different” and “A Heavy Load,” plus, as in the TV show, a character whose only line is “Girl!” The production is directed by Alan Kliffer, whose qualifications include twenty years’ experience writing and directing comedy, and a lifetime of being Canadian.—Dan Stahl