Displaying items by tag: Grant Drager

I've been a devoted fan of David Cerda's Hell in a Handbag Productions for so many of the 23 years they have been in Chicago, and I still get the same great feelings whenever I attend one of their award-winning camp comedy/musical shows.

Having grown up in Miami, Florida with my Golden Girl mom, Joanne, during the years in which the TV show was on the air I have a special affinity for all of their Golden Girls adaptations, especially the Christmas Editions. 

The plotline for The Golden Girls Save Christmas - A Lost Parody Episode at Center on Halsted involves a very sexy Blanche who boffs old Saint Nick until his back gives out and the whole gang has to band together to save Christmas. This show is just a nonstop funny reminder that holidays are for loving up your family, friends, and lovers like any other Holiday. 

This year's Christmas production directed by Frankie Leo Bennett features original cast members David Cerda as Dorothy, Grant Drager as Blanche, Ed Jones as Rose, and Ryan Oates as Sophia as the fearsome geriatric foursome - and they are as spot on as ever in their expert renditions of all four great actresses in the TV show. The fantastic performances from these four original cast members are reason enough for me to keep returning year after year for all of the Golden Girls Handbag shows. 

With the leads taking on the famous TV roles - Cerda as Bea Arthur’s Dorothy the dry, cool anchor of comedy, Drager as the flirtatious unabashedly insatiable Blanche, played by so well by Rue Mclanahan and Ed Jones as the naive, scene stealer as Betty White’s Rose, the Handbag company goes way beyond parody and even beyond camp into a realm of musical theatre genius. This talented cast is compelling and endearing to watch as one feels that you are at times witnessing a live theatrical performance from these three grand dames of comedy!

There are fantastic cameos and lots of big laughs and songs coming from the supporting cast this year from Eustace Allen, Kelly Bolton, Terry McCarthy, Michael Rashid, Scott Sawa, Tyler Anthony Smith, Danne W. Taylor, and Robert Williams.

Hell in a Handbag Golden Girls shows always begin with the whole audience singing the theme song, "Thank you for being a friend," which perfectly sets up the audience for an evening of lighthearted, sentimental, yet bawdy, good adult fun. 

If you are one of those people who delight in period costumes from the 80's you will LOVE all of the fantastic hair makeup and costumes and shoes in this show. The production team includes Madeline Felauer (Costume Design), Liz Syd Genco (Make-Up Design) and Keith Ryan (Wig Designer). 

Hell in a Handbag Productions’ The Golden Girls Save Xmas also has a generous intermission for drinking and catching up with your friends that begins and ends with terrific full cast song and dance numbers like the great tune “You Can't Stop Christmas! It's Coming!”, so you feel you've gotten a nice full night out of socializing and entertainment!  

Be sure to pose for a picture with the fully costumed cast of stars after the show and your donation will be given to AIDS-related charities. Also, mark your calendars for Peep Show, the team’s yearly fundraiser on December 10^th at Center on Halsted to support Hell in A Handbag Productions, a Chicago classic camp favorite theater company that keeps on creating compassionate, funny, camp extravaganzas with live singers - not impersonators - who maintain the highest level of comedic expertise! For more information on Peep Show, click here.

The world premeire The Golden Girls Save Xmas - A Lost Parody Episode by Artistic Director David Cerda is being performed at Center on Halsted’s The Hoover-Leppen Theatre through December 30^th. Tickets are just $42 if purchased in advance and $45 at the door, and $36 for group rates of 10 or more. For tickets and/or more show information, visit www.handbagproductions.org.    

Highly recommended!

There are certain theatrical events that I look forward to attending each season and Hell in a Handbag's Holiday shows are always at the top of my list. ‘The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes – The Holiday Edition, Vol 2’ should be on the top of everyone’s list.  

When I'm sitting in the super cozy Mary's Attic filled with Christmas lights watching one of their wonderful camp parodies, I always feel like I am at home and in the company of great friends and family. This time I love everything about this show, including the opening when host Lori Lee (sidekick Flo) leads the audience in singing the theme song from Golden Girls TV show set in sunny Miami where I grew up. 

Thank you for being a friend.

Travel down the road and back again.

Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant

.And if you threw a party,

invited everyone you knew.

You would see the biggest gift would be from me

and the card attached would say,

thank you for being a friend.

This year’s 'Lost Episodes,' written with cheeky humor- as well as great compassion by Artistic Director David Cerda has especially sweet plotlines that remind me again how lucky one is to have friends and family around you... particularly during your golden years. 

Ed Jones as Rose Nylund, who still believes in Santa Claus is a scene stealer, as always delivers his spot on and totally endearing portrayal of the character made famous by the still "golden" Betty White. 

Grant Drager as Blanche delivers the sass and unabashedly sexy spice that shows even golden girls still have sexual needs that they should not be ashamed of! David Cerda as Dorothy and Ryan Oates as her mother Sophia bring home the dry humor that makes me laugh out loud every time. But I am also reminded of the true bond between mother and daughter when Sophia breaks her poker face and gently asks her daughter, "What's wrong pussycat?"  

Directed and choreographed by the very talented Stevie Love, each scene has a huge variety of great physical comedy and lighting surprises that make you wish the play was longer. Lori Lee is the host of the evening and gets acquainted with the audience between episodes with fun Golden Girls trivia that includes prizes for the audience members. Having the house lights up and interacting with Lori and others as they try to guess the answers lets you actually get to mingle with the audience you are sitting in and is a lovely part of the show.

If you've already been to a Hell in a Handbag Production and are addicted to their special brand of camp humor and music like I am, you already know how unique and fun their shows are. If you haven't been to one yet, ‘The Holiday Edition, Vol 2’ of Golden Girls is a PERFECT production to attend. 

Tis the season to curl up on one of the comfy couches at Mary's Attic with a hot toddy in hand and have a long, hard... laugh with your favorite family of friends! 

‘The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes – The Holiday Edition, Vol 2’ is being performed at Mary’s Attic through December 29th. For more information visit www.handbagproductions.org.

Just in time for Halloween comes Hell in a Handbag’s The Golden Girls: Bea Afraid! The play’s name itself probably tips most off that audiences will be in for one helluva ride. Handbag found much success in the past couple of years creating their own hysterical episodes of The Golden Girls, Vol 1 was extended twice and moved to a larger theater while Vol 2 also made waves. So, a Halloween special featuring our four favorite seniors – why not?

Artistic Director David Cerda and company are working double time right now performing in Artificial Jungle at 7:30 p.m. (through October 28th) followed by Bea Afraid! at 10:30 p.m. To say this theatre company works hard is an understatement. And one thing is for sure – there’s a whole lot of funny in each production.

Bea Afraid! gives us two Halloweeny episodes, the first a clever whodunit that gets sillier by the second (that’s a good thing) followed by a demon possession that you will never forget. As laughter-filled as the second episode was, my friend walked away saying, “That actually kind of scared me.” So, laughs and scares – the best of both worlds – the treat followed by the trick. Between scenes Golden Girls trivia is held and tongue-and-cheek prizes are handed over to the lucky winners, such as the lady who sat in front of me that was handed a tube of anti-itch crème. How well do you know the gals?

Cerda returns as Dorothy displaying the same dominance over the role that helped make Vol 1 such a smash hit while Ed Jones reprises his role as Rose and commands a laugh just about every time a line is delivered. Adrian Hadlock also rejoins the cast and again nails the role of Dorothy’s razor-sharp witted mother, Sophia. Grant Drager is ever so saucy as our beloved, loose-legged, Blanche, a role that AJ Wright played so well in the first of the hilarious franchise. The cast is rounded out by such brilliantly humorous talents as Chazie Bly, Michael S. Miller, Michael Rashad, Duane W. Taylor, Robert Williams and Maureen SanDiego, who stars as the evening’s hostess.

Created by David Cerda and directed by Becca Holloway, this is a Halloween show not to be missed. Handbag gets another feather in their cap for yet another hysterical production, leaving us to eagerly await the next Golden Girls adventures - please say there will be more!

The Golden Girls: Bea Afraid! Is being performed at Stage 773 through November 2nd. For tickets and/or more show information visit www.handbagproductions.org.

Hell in a Handbag is at it again, this time following up last summer’s smash hit The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes with a Volume 2 that might even be funnier than its predecessor, if that’s even possible. Last year, Handbag’s Golden Girls was so successful it added a second run at Stage 773 after an already extended run while at Mary’s Attic in Andersonville.

Like last time, the show opens with that ever-so-popular theme song, "Thank You for Being a Friend" that is eagerly sung along with by audience members.

I have to stop right here and THANK David Cerda "for being a friend"!

I grew up in Miami, Florida, watching The Golden Girls on TV with my mother who had just returned to the work force after a 30-year hiatus at First American Bank after the men in our family had left our home due to tragic disability, genetic Ataxia (cerebellar atrophy).

As two gals trying to keep a household afloat on our own, the recurring themes in the show about a woman's right to independence and struggling to make ends meet, trying to date again after divorce etc. all really gave my mom, Joanne, and I a sense that we were not alone in our struggles, not by a long shot. In fact, my mother Joanne Newmark-Katz, actually interviewed Bea Arthur and other stars like Ricardo Montalban back in the day as an English/ Journalism Major from Purdue University! My mom fondly remembers speaking to Bea Arthur backstage at The Coconut Grove Playhouse where Bea actually gave her a kiss on the cheek and ever so graciously thanked her!

Now, flash forward to 2018 and my mother Joanne is 84-years-old, a true Golden Girl and we are BOTH fighting for her life and financial well-being again. 

For me, in this totally stressful, very real "episode" of our lives, getting to have a few hours of superb acting and comedy by Jeff Award Nominee and dear friend, David Cerdas' Hell in a Handbag ensemble is like two hours in paradise, because in these turbulent times particularly trying for the elderly and disabled -- laughter is still the BEST medicine. 

Hell in a Handbag Artistic Director David Cerda wrote the show which parodies the famed 1980’s sitcom where four women who share a home in a Miami Senior Community are not ready to stop living life to the fullest. The show, still widely popular today and followed by a whole new generation, is the perfect target for Cerda’s rich and pinpoint lampooning.

Cerda again takes the treasured TV show to new heights, his knack for delicious camp blazing its way to what should be yet another summer hit for Handbag.     

Blanche is played by Grant Drager (A.J. Wright handling the role last year). Drager encapsulates Blanche’s flirty, southern charm with just the right amount of cheekiness and is stupendous in the role. Adrian Hadlock returns as Dorothy’s quick-witted mother who wisely and desperately needs to appease her roommates or be sent back to the dreaded "Nursing home". Hadlock trades jabs with dry as a martini wit and, as last year, steals a good share of scenes delivering razor-sharp barbs that are perfectly timed in Cerda’s hilarious script. 

Dear, sweet and naïve Rose is played once again by Ed Jones who is sheer perfection in the role.  Jones’ flawless timing and subtle expressions make Rose as endearing as she is funny. And Cerda as Dorothy? Priceless! Each add their own spice to the entrée but it is Cerda, Jones, Drager and Hadlock together that makes this production a veritable feast for the eyes, ears and arthritic funny bones!   
 
With every Handbag production comes a hysterical ensemble and Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes Vol. 2 is no exception. A series of hilarious performances are also offered by Chazie Bly, Michael Rashid and Michael Miller with fun-tastically talented ensemble member, audience wrangler and hostess, Lori Lee. 
 
Excellent stage and costume design, smart humor, a talented cast and a side-splittingly funny script make Golden Girls Vol. 2 an all-out, highly uniquely fun experience.
 
Golden Girls' Lost Episodes are more relevant than ever because they wisely combine humor with a cascade of compassionate understanding of each woman's precarious lifestyle when reaching middle or old age and the very real desperation that ensues when four women try to keep a household afloat in a man's world. David Cerda really comprehends and makes funny the things that push mother/daughter love and girlfriend to girlfriend love to its limits. 
 
The adventure continues! Created by popular demand, Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes Vol. 2 is as uproariously funny as ever. Perhaps (fingers crossed) a Vol.3 is on the horizon in what will hopefully become an incredibly fun summer tradition.
 
Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes Vol. 2 is being performed at Mary’s Attic in Andersonville through September 7th. Visit http://www.handbagproductions.org/ for more info. 

Fun! Funny! Funnier! If you are fan of The Golden Girls TV show, then run, don't walk, to see Hell in a Handbag’s The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes at Mary's Attic before its special, recently extended, run is over. The show opens with a heart lifting, hug your best friend singalong of the sitcom’s famed theme song, "Thank you for being a Friend" - in its fantastic entirety! 

Plenty of fans arrive in costume to see the show and in between the hysterically funny, bawdy, R-Rated "Lost Episodes” theatre goers are entertained by Golden Girls trivia contests with fun prizes, so live it up. 

Hell in a Handbag Artistic Director David Cerda wrote the show which parodies the famed 1980’s sitcom where four women who share a home in a Miami Senior Community are not ready to stop living life to the fullest. Cerda is fantastic as the deadpan Dorothy even with the use of just one syllable – “Mah!" David, who recently won a well-deserved special Jeff Award (Congrats!) for all of his amazing contributions to theatre in Chicago with his much beloved production company Hell in a Handbag, evokes laughs with every shoulder-padded shrug and anchors the show with his dead-on funny accuracy in the role of Dorothy that actress Bea Arthur made famous. 

I don't know how he does it but every single show David writes is unique, displays every cast members talents superbly, heartfelt and funnier than the last. In this show, he takes the iconic TV show and brings it to a new level, creating hysterically campy “lost episodes” that one could only wish took to the air during the series’ heyday.  

Blanche is played with true southern sex appeal by A. J. Wright. Wright is mind-blowingly accurate in his portrayal of the flirty man-eater. Wright is so convincing, I had to occasionally close my eyes and just listen with delight, because I really felt he was a woman channeling Rue Clanahan, not a man in drag. The razor-sharp tongued Sophia played by Adrian Hadlock is also right on the mark with his dry as a martini, machine gun-like delivery of every single one-liner.

Ed Jones rounds out this fearsomely funny foursome with his always gentle, never forced portrayal of the delicate and ditzy, Rose, often forced to do and say indelicate things! Handbag favorite Ed Jones is - as ever, roaringly funny and true to Betty White's every gesture, even to her dazed and confused looks of naivety. As in all of Handbag’s productions, Golden Girls is equipped with a stellar ensemble, this show including hilarious performances by Chazie Bly, Kristopher Bottrall, Grant Drager, Lori Lee, David Lipschutz, Terry McCarthy, Michael S. Miller and Robert Williams.

Not ignoring the other fine touches that make this such a fun experience, Myron Elliot’s costumes and Keith Ryan's wigs and makeup are a laugh riot in themselves and really help each actor achieve the eerie accuracy that makes this a true golden fest for fans of the show. 

David Cerda and I have some kind of strange psychic connection in that his shows always seem to coincide in some synchronistic way with things going on in my life and family, and Golden Girls was just what I needed to see. My mother and I lived in Miami Florida throughout my whole young adult life and the week I saw this production of Golden Girls (one of my mom's favorite shows to watch with me) she was in the hospital and I was extremely stressed and worried about losing her. When David says as Dorothy about her mother Sophia, "She's probably thinking back to her youth in the fields of Sicily," and then sighs, "God, I'd wish she'd just die," I had to let out a cathartic laugh because it was just such a perfectly funny, subtext of compassion coupled with frustration of the statement of all mother/daughter love when stretched to its limits. I loved it. Naturally, I don’t wish such a thing, but Cerda’s writing has a way of somehow finding love and humor in even such a statement.  

I didn't stop laughing or smiling from start to finish of this uproariously funny take on the Golden Girls that no fan should miss. Even if you are not familiar with the show, it’s worth checking out. Don't worry, you’ll pick it up quickly. And like many Hell in a Handbag shows, there is an intermission long enough to stretch, grab a drink and use the restroom which allows you to really allow the funniness of the first act to sink in. Increasingly I find myself enduring 90-minute or longer shows with no intermission as if the audience is trapped in some kind of marathon endurance test of our concentration and bladders! But not at Hell in a Handbag shows, which proves yet again that David Cerda is in tune with everything a Golden Girl needs to truly enjoy a laugh packed night out with your best friends. Much Thanks to David Cerda for "being a friend!”

Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes is being performed at Mary’s Attic in Andersonville on Wednesday and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m now extended through September 16th. Saturday dates have been added for August. Tickets are $20, but are just $16 if purchased in advance. To purchase tickets or to find out more about this hilarious show wonderfully directed by Shade Murray, visit handbagproductions.org.

Wow! Get ready to be entertained and blown away by two men, with eighteen, yes eighteen, costume changes in a 105-minute play with lead mother figure Bertha Bumiller played by Anthony Whitaker in drag and Grant Drager playing most of the younger male and female characters (Arles, Didi, Stanley, Charlene, Jodi, Petey, Vera and Dixie). These two talents make for one hilarious and yet, at times, disturbing piece of theater now that Trump is President and the animal and human cruelty is perpetrated against each person who loves in the “the third smallest town in Texas”, a dump “where the Lion’s Club is too liberal and Patsy Cline never died.”

As announced on the local radio show the winning school essays include “Human Rights—Why Bother?” and “The Other Side of Bigotry”. And so begins Deep in the Heart of Tuna, the latest in the “Tuna” series, currently running at Pride Arts Center in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.

I was unaware that adapter Ed Howard and original author-performers Joe Sears and Jaston Williams (Greater Tuna, A Tuna Christmas, and Red, White, and Tuna) had revived this new play from pieces of the trilogy above though it didn't affect my understanding of the hard lives these people live while having little money to keep up with their neighbors. People wearing third generation hand me downs and living on a farm-like house where the youngest and most sensitive son has ten dogs and a few kitty cats literally following him to school and back until he can find them adoption homes.  

I found the staging and lighting brilliant with audience members on both sides of the intimate theater performing space, putting us right in Bertha’s kitchen. Adding the finishing touch, are the costumes and wigs which are truly amazing and used to their ultimate. When I found that neither actor had a dresser to help them make these quick changes, I was even more impressed. Still knowing there were only two cast members, they played the men and women so touchingly and realistically funny, I could have sworn there was a cast of five people or more hidden in the wings. 

The town of Tuna can sometimes be a scary place where the "smut snatchers" a local anti-porn group try to expose the dirty words in Dickens Christmas Carol, including "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman", because you know, "Merry Gentlemen" is a little too close to gay gentleman in Tuna, Texas. 

The smut snatchers are busy cutting apart the children’s' Christmas pageant, which they have worked on for months. It is eventually canceled by the local school official and local government because the school does not have the funds to pay its electric bill, despite pleas to let the children perform, in part because one child needs this performance to complete his reform school probation and leave town without a criminal record (for painting over street signs). The lights are shut off and the show does not go on. At the same time a Christmas Phantom is on the loose in the neighborhood destroying outdoor holiday displays. There’s a lot going on in this small town. 

Anthony Whitaker's multilayered characterization of the mother figure as she struggles to make ends meet in this piece reminds me so much of my dear friend Louie Anderson's spectacular mother characterization in his new hit show "Baskets". 

Grant Drager, a newcomer to the New American Folk Theatre ensemble, plays the rest of the male and female characters with mind blowing accuracy and such poignancy. For his outstanding work in this two-man show, Drager really is deserving of a Jeff Award, as well as Whitaker.

Though many of the characters are run-of-the-mill, low-income Southern folks with seemingly good hearts, at times, the extreme stereotype Texas hard core right wingers are also demonstrated in the play. It's mind boggling that the small-mindedness of the latter mentioned characters of this tiny town exist in real life, boasting about and bringing forth soul crushing ideas along with anti-gay sentiments and anti-animal rights, i.e. and "Tuna" takes a few good shots. A great line that represents that type of mentality in this play is when Didi, who runs the local gun shop for her mother, says, "If we don't have a gun (or poison) to kill what you want, that thing is supernatural!" This show can make great but serious fun of that particular group on a few occasions though it mainly celebrates small town warmth, kindness and simplicity. Though "Tuna" often pokes fun of small town life in the South, it is done with affection, actually endearing us to several of the characters even more so.  

This satire of rural life is highly recommended for two of the most versatile and thought provoking performances in this play about a dysfunctional family and the small town problems that arise. Directed by Derek Van Barham, New American Folk Theatre's Deep in the Heart of Tuna is being performed at Pride Arts Center through March 5th. For show information or tickets, click here. Y'all hurry now!