Kyra Brown on her Heated Rivalry musical parody: ‘I’d be happy knowing we were the first drag one’
Ice hockey bonkfest Heated Rivalry became a surprise pop-culture sensation when it screened earlier this year. Now, fans are in for a treat as a triumvirate of shows face off at the Fringe with musical homages to the small-screen hit
Heated Rivalry isn’t just the name of Rachel Reid’s ice hockey romance turned HBO Max phenomenon. This August, it’s become a perfect description for the trio of companies who have brought their own musical take on the same story to this year’s Fringe. If the fandom has room for one more fantasy, it’s apparently a three-way. Which raises the obvious question: who had the idea first? The answer is surprisingly murky as all three groups claim it. Probably just depends which ‘first’ you mean: first announcement, first script or first performance. It’s the theatrical equivalent of pubs across the city claiming to be Scotland’s oldest.
‘We were the first to have a full production up and running,’ says Rob Warner of Heated Rivalry: The Musical Parody! whose LA sketch troupe Quick And Funny Musicals writes and stages a new work every month; Alan Kliffer, director of Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorised Musical Parody (pictured above), counters that his Off-Broadway hit sold eight performances before a script even existed; and Kyra Brown, co-creator of Puck Bunnies: A Heated Rivalry Drag Musical Parody admits: ‘I’d be happy knowing we were the first drag one.’
In truth, it’s a remarkably friendly rivalry. The three companies are fans of each other and audiences seem to be following suit, already posting their own ‘Heated Rivalry line-ups’ online featuring all three. But ask each company why this show became such a sensation and you will also get different answers. For Kliffer, it’s men learning to be vulnerable with each other. For Andrew Young, co-head writer of Quick And Funny’s version, it’s because two alpha male characters are allowed real intimacy without the trauma that usually accompanies gay love stories on screen. For Brown, it’s women watching an emotional freedom they’re rarely granted themselves.
All fine and good, but they don’t agree on why the fandom exists. But it does and it’s enormous. Audiences turn up in bedazzled hockey jerseys hoping to spot Easter eggs or relive iconic moments: Kip and Scott’s kiss on the ice, the shower scene, the waterbottle. Regulars enter nightly ticket lotteries hoping to see the show again and again, something Kliffer calls ‘re-heating’. There are, however, two things every company agrees on. This story was born to be parodied. And it was born to be sung.
Quick And Funny Musicals’ Heated Rivalry: The Musical Parody! is exactly that: quick, funny and unmistakably musical. Packed with pop-inspired numbers, slick choreography and plenty of tongue-in-cheek fan service, their production never loses sight of one golden rule: ‘When do you start singing? When you can no longer express it by talking,’ says Warner. It’s a philosophy he took seriously. Despite not speaking a word of Russian, he learned two minutes of dialogue in that language for the role of Ilya Rozanov. Young reveals the show’s earnest, hopeful showstopper is called ‘When Everyone Is Gay In 2019’, proof that beneath all the outrageous comedy lies a surprisingly heartfelt celebration of love, identity and belonging.
Puck Bunnies: A Heated Rivalry Drag Musical is named after the slang for women who like to sleep with hockey players. Creators Kyra Brown and Christan Leonard call themselves the scrappy underdogs of the three: no big producers, no attachment to major theatres, just an LA improv cast of drag kings doing this their own way. Their queerness sits at the heart of why they wanted to make it, a chance to show that the story belongs just as much to queer audiences as to the straight women and teenage girls who connected with it so loudly. Brown, who also writes on Apple TV+’s Shrinking, unsurprisingly has a gift for the perfect one-liner. On the show’s relentless niceness, she calls it, only half jokingly, ‘schmuckbait’. And she grapples with a life-defining question: ‘Do I want to be Rozanov… or do I want to fuck Rozanov?’
Putting two women in drag as the leads lets them tell a male love story from the outside in, push the comedy further, lean harder into camp and turn the show’s simulated sex scenes into something knowingly, safely funnier than watching two men do the same thing. Their favourite number is ‘Guys Can Be Lesbians Too’, written by Leonard and inspired by a running joke in which two male characters sleep together once and are practically living together by the next episode, poking fun at the classic lesbian U-Haul stereotype. Brown is so proud of it she even wears a cap embroidered with the song title.
Finally, there’s the show playing it (relatively) straight: Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorised Musical Parody, fresh from an acclaimed Off-Broadway run ahead of its Fringe transfer. Director Alan Kliffer was the inaugural artistic director of Second City New York, producing audition showcases for Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show while writer Dylan MarcAurele brings his own pedigree as the writer behind Fringe hit Pop Off, Michelangelo!. Kliffer is adamant the songs aren’t just funny, they’re built to live rent-free in your head for weeks. ‘Dylan writes really memorable music,’ he says, before bursting into a chorus from MEG4N, another MarcAurele musical (based on the killer robot movie), just to prove his point.
No one agrees who got there first. No one agrees why the fandom exists. No one is making quite the same show. And yet all three have arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Heated Rivalry was always going to become a musical, whether through Broadway craft, lightning-fast parody or gloriously queer drag. Fans were singing about it long before anyone wrote the first song.
Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorised Musical Parody, Underbelly George Square, until 30 August, 7.50pm; Puck Bunnies: A Heated Rivalry Drag Musical Parody, Gilded Balloon Patter House, until 31 August, 10.45pm; Heated Rivalry: The Musical Parody!, Gilded Balloon Patter House, until 30 August, 7.45pm.