3.5 stars (out of 4)

I’m a Grinch when it comes to Christmas, made-for-TV rom-coms. I loathe them with all my being. But I thoroughly enjoyed “Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical,” a new show running at Second City until Sunday. George Reinblatt and Suzy Wilde’s romp skewers all the tropes of the genre. You know the story: A young woman (Tess Barao) returns to her small town for the holidays, without her overworked boyfriend (A Braatz). Back homes, she falls in love with a charming, single dad (Tenaj Williams) with a precocious daughter (Nikki Brianne Samonte). But, uh oh, there’s another woman (Barbara Johnston) who’s caught his eye, too. You know how this all ends. But this show is so endlessly charming and witty that you can’t help falling in love with it. Until Nov 16 at Second City.

A. Braatz (left), Tess Barao and Tenaj Williams send up holiday rom-coms. Photo courtesy of the company

Predictably fun

Glenn Sumi

14 Nov 2025 

The Hallmark-style holiday romantic comedy is so ubiquitous that it’s spawned a sub-genre of musicals that gently (or not so gently) send them up. A couple of years ago we saw Chris, Mrs., a sweet and family-friendly show that deserves another life. And this season not one but two shows aim to entertain those who know all the beats of the formula. 

First out of the gates is the ridiculously fun Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), with a book and lyrics by George Reinblatt(Evil Dead The Musical) and music by Reinblatt and Suzy Wilde (After the Rain). 

✅ = Critic’s pick / ✭✭✭✭✭ = outstanding, among best of the year / ✭✭✭✭ = excellent / ✭✭✭ = recommended / ✭✭ or ✭ = didn’t work for me

Overworked magazine writer Holly (Tess Barao) is spending the holidays away from her boorish boyfriend Sam (A. Braatz) at her hometown of Christmasville, where townsfolk only drink eggnog and her Uncle Nick (Jonathan Shaboo) runs a Christmas tree business that’s about to go out of business.

Soon after returning, Holly bumps into a handsome widower named Mark (Tenaj Williams), who’s got an adorable kid named Heather (Nikki Brianne Samonte). Holly’s nemesis Amber (Barbara Johnston), however, is also interested in Mark, and soon Sam is on his way up to complicate things further.

Reinblatt, who also directs, has great fun sending up all the tropes of the genre, critiquing them with songs like the self-explanatory “Family-Friendly, Multi-Activity, Outdoor Wintertime Date” and (talk about moral dilemmas not explored in Hallmark films) “Should I Cheat?”

He even includes a very clever audience participation bit about a former TV star who seems to be in just about every Hallmark film ever made. 

The songs are tuneful and catchy; they’re also very democratically parcelled out. Normally, we don’t get the POVs of the secondary characters, but here the rival, the bro-ey former boyfriend and even the kid being raised by the single dad get individual numbers. 

Speaking of which, this show features some phenomenal talents. I went in only knowing Johnston’s name (she frequently collaborates with Wilde and music director Anika Johnson), but went away studying the credits of the other five, wanting to see and hear more from them. 

Let’s hope this show catches on and becomes an annual, or semi-annual tradition — like the viewing of the TV films themselves. At the very least I hope the producers release a cast album; a bunch of the songs, including the final number, “I Got a Ring for Christmas,” deserve regular play. 

A Festive, Self-Aware Crowd-Pleasing “Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical” at Second City Toronto Contains More Heart Than You’d Expect

A. Braatz, Tess Barao, and Tenaj Williams in Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical. Photo by Christie V Allen.

The Toronto Theatre Review: Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical at Second City Toronto

By Ross

The new Christmas show, Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical, may arrive wrapped in the sparkly and sugarplum fairy clichés of every Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movie ever made, but, to my great surprise, what’s inside that gift box is far more delightful than the title suggests. I expected a broad spoof, centered on a one-note narrative, but what I unwrapped was a far more lovingly crafted, frequently hilarious musical that winks at its audience while genuinely embracing the big-vocal, holiday spirit it pokes fun at. It’s a tricky balance, as parody and sincerity rarely hold hands gracefully. But luckily for us all, director George Reinblatt (book and lyrics) and Suzy Wilde (music, with Reinblatt) manage the whole Christmas spirit thing with a smart light touch, a wide grin, and a surprisingly big Saint Nick heart.

The plot is intentionally predictable. The big-city magazine writer, Holly, returns to her small town home, bumps into Mark, a single dad, and inevitably helps save the failing Christmas tree lot owned by Holly’s much-ignored Uncle Nick (Jonathan Shaboo), all while quickly falling in love with the handsome man she will, I guess, spend a lifetime with. Or so says the rules of this Christmas town and these types of stories. 

It’s the most basic gingerbread cookie cut-out plot line around, and we’ve seen it packaged and shipped out on those cable networks over and over again with different cutout casting. But that predictability becomes the candy cane fuel for the comedy. Reinblatt and Wilde layer in seventeen vocally impressive original songs that knowingly riff on just about every Christmas tune lodged permanently in our cultural memory. And they’re really good songs: catchy, cheeky, and performed with a vocal polish you don’t always expect from a parody musical. Several numbers even had that Little Shop of Horrors magic, brilliantly blending camp, charm, and sharp musicality while giving performers plenty of room to glisten and shine.

Tess Barao, Tenaj Williams, and Barbara Johnston in Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical. Photo by Christie V Allen.

What makes the show so engaging is its commitment to the bit, especially in the loving hands of its two leads, both decked out in full ugly-Christmas-sweater glory (superb costuming by Carlyn Ranusaar Routledge). Tess Barao (PEI’s Anne and Gilbert) as Holly and Tenaj Williams (Citadel’s The Color Purple) as Mark shine inside every song and gag, working the material like magnificent pros with great pipes. The wonderfully talented cast, which also includes A. Braatz, Barbara Johnston, and Nikki Brianne Samonte, brings such clever energy and precision to the stage that even the most over-the-top tropes feel fresh again. Much of that polish is thanks to music director Anika Johnson (MSC/OtM’s Dr. Silver), who keeps the score tight and vocally sharp, and to choreographer Kendra Brophy (Stranger Sings…), whose playful staging threads the needle between parody and genuine musical-theatre joy. Add in the solid, smart contributions of set and props designer Meredith Wolting (Shifting Ground’s Ride the Cyclone), lighting designer Gareth Crew (Eldritch’s Macbeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot), and sound designer Michael Laird (Factory’s Trojan Girls…), and the whole production hums with a professional sparkle that amplifies the comedy rather than overwhelming it. You feel the entire team having fun with the material, and that spirit becomes infectious.

The only fault to be found is simply that the show runs a tad longer than it really needs to be. A tight ninety minutes would likely have preserved its momentum more cleanly and kept us singing its Christmas praises until the actual day. But even when the pacing slows the show down slightly, the charm doesn’t. The production remains consistently entertaining, buoyed by its stellar musical invention and by the cast’s ability to sell every wink, grin, and melodramatic moment with full-hearted enthusiasm.

Like the actual fantasy holiday it pokes its finger at, Predictable Holiday Rom-Com: The Musical delivers exactly what it promises, and a whole lot more. It’s festive, funny, tuneful, and unabashedly joyful, a cheerful Canadian-made syrupy send-up that never sneers at the genre it lampoons. And with another brand-new Christmas spoof, the upcoming The Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical, waiting in the wings for me later this month, I can honestly say this one sets a surprisingly high bar for holiday silliness done right. It’s a festive romp that knows exactly what it’s doing and executes it with real skill. Predictable? Absolutely. But in this case, that’s half the joke, and all of the charm.

Review: PREDICTABLE HOLIDAY ROM-COM/THE UNAUTHORIZED HALLMARK(ISH) PARODY MUSICAL at Second City/The Royal

Given the same source material, why do some parodies succeed, while others fall flat?

Within a week, Toronto audiences had the opportunity to see two musicals which parody that scourge of November to January television, the Hallmark Christmas Movie. The first, PREDICTABLE HOLIDAY ROM-COM, had a brief run at Second City; the second, HALLMARK(ISH)–THE UNAUTHORIZED PARODY MUSICAL, plays into January at The Royal Cinema. 

Both come from impressive pedigrees: the first is from parodymeister George Reinblatt of Evil Dead the Musical (book, lyrics, music, direction) and After the Rain’s Suzy Wilde (music), the second from a New York crew, direction, book and lyrics from Tim Drucker (the parody Love Actually?), book and lyrics from Tony-winner Bonnie Milligan (Kimberly Akimbo), and music and lyrics from Joel Waggoner of the Broadway casts of Be More Chill and School of Rock. 

Both feature leads named Holly and Mark, who encounter each other in Holly’s small hometown, where she’s come back to visit from the big city. Both critique Hallmark’s Dream in a (Ring) Box ethos, where career and love rarely coexist, and our heroine must make a regressive choice to ensure a specific type of societally-approved happiness; both counter with a message that you actually can have it all. Both Hollies have a Christmas Eve deadline, and both Marks have a dead wife and a young daughter. Both plots involve climactic Christmas cookie competitions, and both lead characters count a disguised Santa as a close relative. Both feature a range of pastiche songs, wonderfully garish Christmas sweaters, and bright, sprightly casts.

So why did the former leave me genuinely jolly, and the latter, while not quite a lump of coal, feel like a glass of eggnog left out a bit too long? Yes, ROM-COM benefitted from the fact that I saw it first, but that doesn’t explain it completely.

The comparison of the dueling Hallmark musicals makes the recipe for a perfect parody, like that of the perfect Christmas cookie, abundantly clear. It comes down to cohesiveness of vision, trust in the audience, and an understanding of the source material’s popularity. 

And, perhaps, even a dash of warmth for that source while still exposing each one of its flaws.

A great Christmas cookie can be made with ingredients from peppermint to ginger to cranberries, but usually not all three; settling on a dominant flavour is ideal, and simpler is often better. Similarly, a parody can take aim at multiple aspects of its source material, but a cohesive tone and purpose help unify it into an engaging work. Commenting loudly on how the source material isn’t cohesive is not a get-out-of-jail-free card from providing a cohesive experience yourself.

Milligan and Waggoner’s HALLMARK(ISH) has a loftier, more admirable goal than Reinblatt’s work in how it calls out the sexism of this genre of film throughout the show, devoting a few songs to the topic of the artificial choice between love or career and making the constraints strangling its lead more obvious. 

This Holly (a chipper Alexandra Clementi), an up-and-coming businesswoman in Big City, comes home to help her single mother (Emily Richardson) work her 12 small-town jobs without going into cardiac arrest. Holly chafes against her sexist pig of a boss and knows that her high school crush Mark Hall (Sean Meldrum, deliciously dopey) is a barely literate man who’s clearly beneath her. She uplifts (dumps work on?) her assistant-cum-best friend Martha (Luke WItt, playing a variety of roles at fever pitch), whom she leaves to settle the important, time-sensitive deal that’s partly in Mandarin, and works to eventually subvert the script she’s been given. 

But the higher meta-ambition of the script sometimes works against it, getting lost in the Christmas chaos that takes aim at everything from a deadbeat Santa to gluten sensitivity to cheesy holiday commercials and therefore misses several opportunities. The script’s subplots don’t add narrative tension. The climactic cookie contest is a rivalry between secondary characters with no specific consequences, Holly’s assistant handling the deal gives our lead little agency or time pressure, and referenced characters like Holly’s absentee dad and Mark’s six-year-old daughter are set up without more than momentary payoff at best. 

Holly’s mother’s baking rival, Cookie (Heidi Michelle Thomas, delivering her Disney villain-style song with relish), could have been a terrific narrative foil for Holly in showing the effects of giving up on your big-city dreams, but the parallel is never explicitly drawn in favour of broader jokes about gay people liking poppers. Even letting the (unseen) town moose run amok during the baking championship is an example of inserting wacky hijinks over narrative design, where a simple change would have clearly tied the animal’s actions to the big reveal instead of running alongside it.

While ROM-COM‘s goal is a more straightforward parody of the beats of a Hallmark film, it gets them pretty pitch-perfect. This Holly (Tess Barao, as bright and chirpy as an Avenue Q muppet) is a magazine writer with a terrible boyfriend (an appropriately smarmy A Braatz) and an uncle back in Christmasville whose Christmas tree farm needs saving (Jonathan Shaboo provides most of the musical’s sly winks and self-awareness). 

Here, Holly must make clear choices on a timeline: does she pick Sam, whose idea of romance is chicken fingers and skipping Christmas for meetings, or the Christmas-loving Mark (Tenaj Williams), who’s a little bland and credulous, but a good father to his seven-year-old daughter? Should she cheat, or do the right thing? The cookie contest’s prize will save the farm: does she betray the father and daughter she’s come to adore in only a few hours to find out their late wife and mother’s unbeatable secret ingredient? The rivalry here belongs to the lead, coming in the form of high school nemesis Amber (a superbly snotty Barbara Johnston), who’s looking to take the cookie crown and Holly’s new man, and isn’t beyond scheming with the one she left behind. 

Each movie beat gets an examination and skewering, such as the delightful and prop-laden “Family-Friendly, Multi-Activity, Outdoor Wintertime Date” or the explanatory “I’m Sexy ‘Cause I’ve Got a Kid.” Sure, things may be a bit predictable, but that’s the point–and everything that’s set up is resolved. 

A good Christmas cookie trusts in its own recipe, not coating sugar with more sugar or burying a solid base underneath artificial flavouring. A good parody trusts that its audience understands it for what it is, which is often demonstrated in how much a show explains its own jokes. ROM-COM exhibits a great deal of trust, making references and employing theatrical techniques without (for the most part) pointing to its own cleverness. It presents the joke on its own merits, while HALLMARK(ISH) mugs to the audience more than a vessel of hot chocolate, trying to land every joke twice. This isn’t a dismissal of the value of metatheatre, which ROM-COM uses in fun ways, commenting on the structure of the movie via the structure of its songs—but that’s the joke itself, not an add-on.

As an example, ROM-COM shows its leads getting kiss-blocked in increasingly improbable and therefore amusing ways, focusing the joke on the aborted action and the lengths these films go to delay a first kiss while ramping up the leads’ sexual frustration. HALLMARK(ISH) also has an interrupted romantic moment, but instead of focusing on the characters’ reaction or dissecting why the form splits them apart, the couple watch a brief song from the Christmas tree that fell down between them. The joke is no longer structural or relevant to the relationship that precipitated it; it’s about a random tree we will never encounter again.

In a transition, ROM-COM brings out two sexy gingerbread men backup dancers, who do a routine a la Flashdance; it’s a cute, high-energy visual moment, presented without commentary. You get the reference or you don’t. In a similar situation from HALLMARK(ISH), Cookie yells, “where are my backup dancers?” before their entrance. ROM-COM’s characters simply start singing, while HALLMARK(ISH) prefaces more than one song with, “Now let’s sing about it!” It’s a small difference, but doing this throughout the show consistently deflates the joke by delaying or overextending it, prioritizing the commentary over the actual material. 

And that’s too bad, because HALLMARK(ISH) has plenty of jokes and some very clever wordplay, actually sneaking in a reference to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’s list of coat colours in a song about types of Christmas cookies, and offering an effectively fast-paced patter song about the moose that gets loose.

Finally, the best cookies are warm out of the oven, and the best media parodies are also warm; they contain an element of affection for the form, considering why the source material, with all its flaws, satisfies many people anyway. Sneering is easy; sympathy is hard. Laughing with the parodied source instead of just at it makes jabs seem earned instead of unkind, placing the parodist and audience in conversation with the original rather than above it from the start (the latter making the parody more vulnerable to criticism of its own mistakes).

ROM-COM knows why so many people enjoy Hallmark movies: most of us want to be loved and accepted, told that we’re enough and that we’re special the way we are. That’s the heart of the genre; it just happens to be delivered in a cliche, regressive package. Reinblatt’s production offers warmth in its character portrayals; Barao’s Holly may leave her articles to the last minute, but she’s actually doing her job, and she seems full of joy and sweetness in how she treats others. The inclusion of Mark’s daughter Heather (Nikki Brianne Samonte has a lovely voice and plays a reasonably credible child), a wisecracking youngster who wants the best for her dad, gives the show a true heart and anchors it. There’s still plenty of acid here; everyone’s deeply flawed and mockable, but ROM-COM plays up the comedic chemistry so you still hope things work out, even for the love-to-hate-them schemers.

The characters of HALLMARK(ISH) operate instead under a sense of being trapped in their material. That’s a concept worth exploring, but one that immediately sets the tone a little meaner, leaving the audience potentially feeling trapped alongside the characters. We want to root for strong, feminist Holly, but her lack of impact on her own story leaves things feeling unmoored. To emphasize the unpleasantness of many of the characters, HALLMARK(ISH) downplays any potential chemistry between actors, thriving in awkward moments and ultimately giving the impression that the team wonders why anyone would ever watch one of these films.

This tonal aspect is reflected in each show’s ethos toward audience participation. ROM-COM’s audience interaction is kind and inclusive, bringing an audience member on stage to play a brief supporting character and giving her the tools to score a round of applause with minimal effort. HALLMARK(ISH) prefers to insult its audience, setting viewers up to collectively fail with sudden, impossible tasks.

Anyone who’s watched Bake Off knows that baking is a fine art; given the exact same recipe, one baker may present a perfect Yule Log, and the next a Yule Wonder What Happened Log. Both of these shows are made of fine ingredients, but that’s the way the Hallmark parody cookie crumbles. ROM-COM could reach a little higher in examining the social issues at play in our love of Hallmark movies, but it’s a damn good parody with some staying power to its silliness. HALLMARK(ISH) has a lot of promise, but could go back for a second spin in the oven.

Photos of the cast of Predictable Holiday Rom-Com by Sam Moffatt