Now at HERE, “The Golden Girls Musical Parody” is entertaining audiences with a campy storyline befitting the actual Golden Girls. It’s the best possible result of equal parts drag show, golden girls, and high school musical.
Starting with an introduction and then a fleeting trivia session, you’re launched right into a cheesecake-y bonanza of laughs. It’s definitely a show of its own, though it borrows heavily from The Golden Girls, it manages to avoid being too predictable and a storyline you might expect in the TV-show if it aired on Bravo and everyone was drunk. Which is actually much better than my words might imply.
It brings the campiness up to eleven with its lampooning of Ricky Martin and all that ensues as the girls jostle for position in their Shady Pines Retirement Home Talent Show act.
The set and projections transform a small space into a space that clearly evokes Shady Pines, the iconic house, the venue of a gay pool party, and backstage onstage.
Boasting an original pop score, “The Golden Girls Musical Parody” is replete with an almost too well cast. Josh Warr (Blanche), Robert Hooghkirk (Dorothy), Nick Brannan (Rose), and Lavinia Draper (Sophia) have all watched each of the original episodes far too many times as their characters have fused with them. It’s drag. It’s parody. It’s perfect.
Regardless of who may win the talent show, everyone is a Queen at Shady Pines.
In New York for a limited time, the show has partnered with WorldPride as an official event commemorating the Stonewall Uprising fifty years ago and reminding us that the fight for full equality isn’t quite here yet. Too bad we don’t have the girls and their crazy antics working on the front lines.