Ryan Bernier’s Golden (Girls) Ticket
Ryan Bernier has been playing Dorothy in "Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue" for two years and shows no signs of stopping.
“This is the first time I’ve had a role for this long,” gasps Ryan Bernier. “We just hit our 300th performance of the show in Detroit in January!”
The show is Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue, a warmly loving, gut-bustingly funny stage parody of the hit NBC series that ran for seven seasons from 1985 to 1982, and lives on in perpetuity in reruns. Bernier portrays Dorothy, made iconic by the indomitable and legendary late Bea Arthur, for whom the 6’3″ actor is also a dead ringer.
To prepare for the role, which Bernier plays in full drag, he “consumed everything that Bea Arthur had ever done — and we’re talking from Maude to her brief gig on the Star Wars Holiday Special to her brief voiceover role in Futurama. She was a performer who really found a way to bring all of the tools in her toolbox to every project that she picked up.
“And so what’s great about that,” the 31-year-old continues, “is I get this incredible variety of what Bea Arthur is in an animated comedy, what is Bea Arthur is in more serious roles. I feel a huge responsibility to do her justice.”
Bernier is joined onstage by Vince Kelley as the sex-positive (or, perhaps more appropriately, slutty) Blanche, Adam Graber as the ditzy, obtuse Rose, and Christopher Kamm as Dorothy’s pugnacious Sicilian mother, Sophia. Tommy Favorite rounds out the cast in the non-drag roles of Dorthy’s ex-husband, Stanley, and a new character, Burt.
Produced by Murray & Peter Presents, a pioneer of the RuPaul Drag Queen travelling dragstravaganzas, the hit play was written by Robert Leleux and directed with comic precision by Eric Swanson.
It was last in D.C. at the Warner Theater in February 2023, where it played to packed houses and returns to the area this Sunday at the shimmering Capital One Hall in Tysons (an easy Metro trip on the Silver line) and next Saturday, March 22, at Baltimore’s fabled Hippodrome before landing at dozens more cities nationwide.
Bernier says the show’s plot structure has remained the same over the years: Dorothy is dating a younger man, Rose and Blanche have developed a hookup app for seniors called CreakN, and Sophia — well, let’s just say she’s taken the full-on drug-lord route. But the show has loosened up over time, and the jokes and gags have evolved.
“As the show has continued to grow, we’ve found a lot of opportunities to have as much fun with each other and the audience as possible,” says Bernier, who works as a substitute teacher in Michigan when not touring. “And the audience responds back to us. The show really has begun to feel like a live taping of a very unhinged episode. And that’s something that we’ve capitalized on in a really magical way.”
Bernier says that while the audiences remain largely filled out with gay men, the play has bridged divides, as all good comedy does. There’s been no false outrage over men playing roles in drag, a time-honored tradition throughout the history of theater. And he attributes it mainly to the beloved nature of the original series.
“That’s the beauty of our show being based on the source,” he says. “It really speaks to the source material. I think what was really incredibly successful about The Golden Girls is that anybody who sits down to watch an episode can point to a character or a moment and feel represented. And I think that hits across aisles and across various demographics.
“I think the gift of our show is that the people who come to it are fans first,” he continues. “The people who come to our show are there to have a good time. And our responsibility as actors is to recreate an experience for people who have loved the material first. Yes, we are men dressed as women, but we’re also fans, just like the audience are fans of the show. And so that’s what we’re really coming together to celebrate the legacy of what the Golden Girls is.”
Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue (★★★★☆) plays Capital One Hall in Tyson’s, Va. on Sunday, March 16, at 3 and 7 p.m. It plays the Hippodrome in Baltimore on Saturday, March 22, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Ticket prices vary depending on venue and seating. The show is 18+ only.
Additional upcoming dates include Norfolk, Va. (3/25), Fayetteville, N.C. (3/29), Macon, Ga. (4/3), Minneapolis, Minn. (4/11), Wichita, Ks. (4/13), and Hamilton, Ontario (4/29). For full tour information, visit www.goldengirlstour.com.
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