Ryan Bernier’s Golden (Girls) Ticket

metroweekly.com:

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.