Thank You for Being a Friend

Thank You for Being a Friend cracks open taboos and challenges the audience. It’s a puppet tribute show of hit 80s television series The Golden Girls. In a nutshell The Golden Girls was about friendship and getting through the ups and downs by coming together, overcoming the bad times and sticking together. It’s about community and salvation and the four older women looking after each other.

The show was also ahead of its time with ideas like Blanche’s overt sexuality and free and open personality, and the theme of homosexuality, which was a huge point in the show. The main crux being Blanche’s son being gay and how she dealt with that. At the time when the show was airing these themes, it was kind of a big deal. It wasn’t just a comedy show, it was a show talking about serious issues.

“The best thing about Thank You for Being a Friend is the puppets themselves. They’re amazingly accurate in their features,” says co-director Luke Joslin, whose main role in the show is teaching the actors the technical aspects of puppetry technique, to make it so the audience doesn’t really notice that side of it and the puppets themselves come to life.

“To actually look at the set design it looks exactly like you’re actually in the set of The Golden Girls. There’s a real cult following within the gay community but we’ve widened the demographic, rewritten it so that anybody can get on board and have a great time with it,” added Joslin. (MS)

September 1 – 6. Glen Street Theatre, Corner of Glen Street & Blackbutts Road, Belrose. $46-$71 (student rush: $16). Tickets & info: glenstreet.com.au or 9975 1455

By Mel Somerville