The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes

The Christmas season is a time to bask in tradition, share memories of loved ones now departed, rejoice in the life we have, and form new bonds with new friends. All of those elements once again give "The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes!" a warm seasonal glow.

This year the drag company at San Francisco's Victoria Theatre presented their interpretations of the television episode "Dorothy's New Friend," in which Dorothy's snobbery rises to overbearing heights with the encouragement of an even bigger literary son; and "The Accurate Conception," in which Blanche is horrified that her considerable reputation will be undone by her daughter's decision to be artificially inseminated.

Uuugghh!

It is an entertainment of the familiar -- throughout the evening, almost every audience member quietly utters or shrieks out the lines they have hear on countless reruns, and the core of the cast has been providing the magic for returning customers for a few years now -- and an exploration of the newly discovered.

There was a sadness for cast and audience heading into this performance because of the death in January of actor Cookie Dough, aka Eddie Bell, who died at the young age of 52 of complications from meningitis after dazzling the local drag performance scene for the better part of two decades.

Cookie Dough had played what may be the toughest role in the company, that of Sophia Petrillo, Dorothy's hardscrabble, stroke-addled mother. Her lines are usually rim-shot counterpoint to other characters' comments, intended to deflect attention and emotion.

Whereas the other actors can spit their lines out at the audience to hit us over the head with the insecure pretentiousness of Dorothy (played by Heklina), or the charming bubbleheadedness of Rose (D'Arcy Drollinger) or the bosom-heaving sensuous vanity of Blanche (Matthew Martin), it is harder for an actor playing Sophia to find the right target for delivering lines. That was the task Cookie Dough handled masterful in past performance and Holotta Tymes struggled with at times in his debut performance.

Her best moments in this year's performance come in a breakfast scene she shares with Dorothy, who repeatedly crushes Sophia's attempts to interject verbal jabs into the conversation. It shows a wonderful physical chemistry between Tymes and Heklina that should blossom with future productions.

Most of us who grew up watching Bea Arthur perform the role of Dorothy always thought of the role as being a masculine rather than feminine role, an interpretation the characters play off often in their cruel remarks to her and one that makes Heklina's heavy interpretation a delight.

Martin has always given audiences a fantastic recreation of Blanche and this year was blessed by having an opportunity for great interplay with Manuel Caneri in his appearance as her daughter Becky. Blanche's interactions with her family members in the original series always brought out the over-the-top drama queen in her and Caneri and Martin ham it up for all it's worth.

Drollinger elevated Rose's spaciness to new heights this year, turning the intellectual disconnect into an act of defiance. And Nancy French steals every scene in which her character appears; her cold condescension cut through theater and elicited all of the howls and boos her character commands.

The original show focused repeatedly on the discomfort many people feel when their emerging progressive beliefs come into conflict with more familiar and comfortable images of their past. In this year's pairing, we feel Blanche's discomfort at the realization that her daughter's progressive procreational option will bless her with a grand daughter but not provide the security and interaction that an accompanying extended family would through a traditional marriage, and the painful harm committed by institutionalized prejudices that would have us divide ourselves into inferiors and superiors.

The message delivered over and over again is always the same: accept it and get over it, or cling to the past and wither away.

My SigOt wasn't able to go with me this year, so I took a friend who is a huge theater buff but was only slightly familiar with the series.

"Which one is from Minnesota?" he asked me before the performance began.

Afterward he liked it, but asked me, "Were the characters really that cruel to each other?"

Well, yes -- we never thought about it at the time, but their comments cut more often than not. Just like in real life. Just like a real (chosen) family.

And as Sophia herself might tell us, they call it family because all of the four-letter words were taken. Get over it.

"The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes!" runs through Dec. 20 at the Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th Street. For tickets or information, visit www.victoriatheatre.org.