‘Golden Girls’ puppet parody of classic TV show coming to Cedar Rapids stage

The last Golden Girl standing was Betty White, who died on New Year's Eve. All that's left of the classic sitcom "The Golden Girls," which was a hit throughout its run from 1985 to 1992, are reruns and "That Golden Girls Show! A Puppet Parody."

The latter, which will appear Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Cedar Rapids, is on its farewell tour.

"The show has been around for a while (since 2016) and it's just time for it to end," Touring Stage Manager Owen O'Brien Smith said. "We are taking it one last time. I can't believe this is our last hurrah, but we're going to make the best of it."

The Puppet Show originally ran as an off-Broadway play in 2016 and the national tour commenced in 2018. The production takes fans back to Miami, 1985, and has fun with the topics that were bandied about during the show's run, such as shoulder pads, Jazzercise, cheesecake, sex and the art of the put down.

" ‘The Golden Girls’ is a timeless classic that is the television equivalent of comfort food," O'Brien Smith said. "No matter what happens during the show, you know everything will be OK at the end, and the characters are so funny."

If the puppet show is as amusing as "The Golden Girls," which airs courtesy of Disney +, it should be a night to remember. Who can forget the relationship between Sophia and her 60-something daughter Dorothy?

"You'll have to excuse my mother," Dorothy said. "She suffered a slight stroke a few years ago which rendered her totally annoying."

“ ‘The Golden Girls,’ the TV show, is a great show," O'Brien Smith said. "We try to have as much fun as we can with our show. as well."

O'Brien Smith, 23, was born six years after the television show was history. "The Golden Girls" eluded his parents.

"But my grandparents are huge fans of the show," he said. "They enjoy our show, as well. With our show, all of the favorite characters — Dorothy, Sophia, Rose and Blanche — are there. We wrote three different episodes. We write jokes and plot lines that could have made it into the show. The audience at our show is like the audience watching a live taping of the TV show. There is nothing like it out in a theater."

Pretty soon there will be nothing else like "The Golden Girls" except the show in syndication.