A modern-day spin on The Golden Girls with a director and actors from Michigan is touring nationally, slated to be at Royal Oak Music Theatre from July 27-30. Golden Girls: The Laugh Continues features Sophia, Blanche, Rose, and Dorothy dealing with raunchy current issues.
Vince Kelley, who plays Blanche Devereaux in the show, says his favorite storyline is when Blanche and Rose create a sex app. “It’s like Grindr but it’s for senior citizens,” he says. Other highlights include Sophia getting busted for making drugs and Dorothy engaging in a romance with a much younger man.
Since Kelley has been working with the production company Murray and Peter Present for five years, they allowed him to choose who he wanted to play. “I just love Blanche because the impersonation is a little easier. You get to do this dramatic southern drawl,” he says. “I like that Blanche is often the butt of the joke, but she doesn't ever get upset… she’ll be the first one to poke fun at herself and she just doesn’t really let she doesn’t let things bother her. I’m very much like that. I like to roll with the punches and I'll be the first one to laugh at myself.”
Kelley, who is the oldest cast member, has been watching the show himself since he was just four or five years old and would ask his grandmother to put on “the old lady show.” For him, starring as Blanche is a dream come true. The cast also includes Ryan Bernier as Dorothy, Adam Graber as Rose, and Christopher Kamm as Sophia, who is an even bigger fan of the show and references specific episodes often, despite not even being born yet when the series aired in 1985.
While the show is touring nationally, the entire cast is either from or currently living in metro Detroit, and the show’s director Eric Swanson is the executive director of the Detroit Actor’s Theatre Company.
“We really, really lucked out that we were able to find all the talented people that we needed right in our own backyard,” Kelley says.
Unlike Kelley, who has been impersonating women in plays and musicals for years, the rest of the cast was fairly new to putting on makeup, wearing wigs, and walking around in heels. So at first, they all came to him for advice.
But now, the actors have all got it down to a science.
Each show night at 7 p.m., the boys get together, listen to ABBA, and are quickly ready by 7:50 for the show at 8.
Often, they are nervous that this crowd may be the one that thinks their impressions are a little too off base and chaotic for the timeless television series.
“Every new city I feel like ‘OK, is this gonna be the time that they’re, like, really upset that we’re messing with the formula, messing with the magic?’” Fortunately, that hasn’t been the case, he says: “Everyone’s just been so, so responsive. Just eating it up.”
While the show is probably only appropriate for adults 18 and up, Kelley says (mostly) everyone else should come out and see it.
“If you don’t enjoy laughing, don’t come,” Kelley says. “I’ll say that, like don’t even bother coming — I would rather not have you there because there’s something wrong with you. Don’t let men in wigs deter you from coming.”
The show does offer a lot of Easter eggs that die-hard fans of The Golden Girls will recognize, but the performance can be entertaining for all.
“The Golden Girls, while they do represent older white women, they have multi-ethnic fans. Everybody loves the Golden Girls, everybody from every different walks of life. It’s multi-generational,” Kelley says. “They are kind of like this special group of ladies who really brought a lot of different people together and I think that’s been super cool to see it play out like that nationwide.”
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