Oh, Mary! The girls spend Christmas in a homeless shelter.
REVIEW There’s something about performing old television shows (i.e. “The Twilight Zone”) on a bare-bones stage two feet from the front row that accentuates what was good about them in the first place–the snappy dialogues, the solid story construction, the tinge of the absurd. Needless to say, the additional bonus of having the parts of four scrappy gran’mas living together in Miami, played by a snazzy quartet of the Bay Area’s finest drag queens puts the icing, as it were, on the Hostess cupcake. Heklina as Dorothy-makes the (ahem) perfect straight-woman. The sarcasm practically drips from her three-inch long eyelashes, without her even having to say a word. Cookie Dough plays her ribald Sicilian mother, Sophia, stage veteran Matthew Martin channels racy southern belle Blanche, and Miss Trannyshack 2007, Pollo del Mar embodies spacey airhead Rose Nyland. In “Sisters of the Bride,” Blanche’s baby brother Clayton (Mike Finn) announces his plans to marry his boyfriend Doug (Laurie Bushman). Consternation and eventual acceptance ensue, along with some great one-liners (Blanche: “What will the neighbors think when they see two men in my bedroom?” Sophia: “They’ll think it’s Tuesday.”) The highly-anticipated Christmas episode, set in a homeless shelter, does lay on the schmaltz a bit thick, but after all, ’tis the season, even in Miami, where–the girls remind us–it is 103 degrees. Santa, how ’bout a plane ticket? Or maybe just a ticket to the next sold-out Golden Girls show… (Nicole Gluckstern)
Fri/28-Sat/29
8 and 10 p.m.
The Finn Theatre
814 Grove, SF
$20 cash donation
waiting list starts at 7:30
www.trannyshack.com
www.cookievision.com