Sappy holiday movies the target of Mosley’s ‘The Hallmork Channel Christmas Melodrama’

When Molly Tully and Ryan Schafer were assigned to write the holiday production for Mosley Street Melodrama, one subject seemed the best for parody.

Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.

“They’re accessible and their story lines are easy to process. There’s always a happy ending,” Tully said. “But there’s so many of them, they create their own cliches, which make them ripe for parody.”

“They’ve almost become parodies of themselves,” Schafer added. “We’re really amplifying that and taking it to a crazy, melodramatic degree.”

“The Hallmork Channel Christmas Melodrama” opens at Mosley Street this weekend and continues through Dec. 26. Most of the Saturday night shows were sold out as of earlier this week and many of the Friday performances were a near sellout.

Note the slight name change in the title of the parody.

“Just in case the media behemoth of the Hallmark Channel says, ‘No, that’s not gonna happen on our watch,’” Schafer said with a laugh.

The Christmas movies have their fans and their detractors, the latter enforced by memes and social media. Critics cite the simplistic, overdone plots and the always-cheerful happy endings for their dislike.

There are several hundred of them out there, including 32 new titles this year, so Schafer and Tully had to indulge for themselves.

“We would be horrible writers if we didn’t do our research,” he said with a laugh. “My mom loves Hallmark movies, and she has them all saved on her DVR. So, Molly and I went over there and sat in my parents’ living room at a card table with our computers and watched a handful of movies and wrote down whatever the hell came to our minds when we were watching them.”

Tully kept track of the movies’ cliches on several different Hallmark Channel bingo cards.

“We were very close (to a blackout) but had two of three missing,” she said.

She and Schafer said they weren’t sure if the cast – Kyle Vespestad, John Keckeisen, Steve Hitchcock, Briley Meek, Julia Faust and Koko Blanton – were fans of the movies.

“I think they’re all familiar because they definitely leaned right into that Hallmark style,” said Schafer, who is also co-directing with Tully. “We are not haters of these movies, but it was a lot of fun to write because there was so much to take and make our own.

The plot, as explained by Schafer, is “the classic tale of girl from a big city, who is a reporter, to come back to her hometown to report on big festival,” where she meets a man from her past.

“Do they get together?” he asks. “I guess you’ll have to come and see the show to find out.”

‘The Hallmork Channel Christmas Melodrama’

Where: Mosley Street Melodrama, 234 N. Mosley

When: Through Dec. 23; performances at 6 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays (and Thursdays beginning Dec. 2), 10:30 a.m. Sundays

Tickets: $28-$36 Fridays-Saturdays, $34-$38 Sundays, from mosleystreet.com or by calling 316-263-0222

This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 2:23 AM.