Interview: Vince Kelley of GOLDEN GIRLS THE LAUGHS CONTINUE at McCullough Theatre

Picture it. United States, 2024. THE GOLDEN GIRLS, THE LAUGHS CONTINUE  brings Miami’s sassiest seniors to stages around the country for one more hurrah. We find Sophia out on bail after being busted by the DEA for running a drug ring for retirees. Blanche and Rose have founded CreakN, a thriving sex app for seniors. And Dorothy is trying to hold it all together with help from a new (much) younger sex-crazed lover. Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue allows audiences to relive the heartfelt hilarity of the four ladies who never stopped being best friends. Recently, I had a chance to visit with Vince Kelley of the cast of the show. Vince is a wonderful, versatile performer currently starring as Blanche Devereaux in the touring production of the show.

A Michigan native, Vince Kelly has over 30 years of experience in theatre, having begun performing at the age of eight. He has appeared in acclaimed productions such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Boys in the Band, and has won the Wild Award for Best Supporting Actor in Michigan for his role in Heathers The Musical. As well as acting, Kelly is an accomplished Costume Designer. He creates looks for productions at schools and theatres, including the Ringwald theatre,a venue closely tied to his artistic journey. Offstage, he enjoys traveling with his partner and spending time with their terrier mix, Mary J. Blige.

VINCE: What a fun little trip down memory lane. I remember I did do that. I think I actually won my first Broadway World Award with Heathers.

BWW: That’s great! So we are looking forward to having you in town to do The Golden Girls. It is one of my favorite television shows. So tell us a little about what we’re in for.

VINCE: Yeah. GOLDEN GIRLS, THE LAUGHS CONTINUE is an all male production of The GOLDEN GIRLS as if it was still on TV today. We like to say that the show just kept on going, except they moved to maybe a streaming site, a little HBO Max action, so that we can use some more colorful language than was allowed on television in the late 80s and early 90s.

It’s super fun. You know, the story might be set in 2024, but it’s still a situation that you could imagine would have happened on The GOLDEN GIRLS. Sophia is on house arrest for selling some drugs for medicinal purposes to her compatriots at Shady Pines. And, Blanche and Rose have developed a little app, a little local dating app for seniors to, you know, have some companionship, you could say. And then on that app, Dorothy meets a man who happens to be Sophia's prosecuting attorney.

BWW: Can you give us a little history about how GOLDEN GIRLS, THE LAUGHS CONTINUE came to be and how it is that we have men playing those roles?

VINCE: Yes. So I had the opportunity to work with this production company about five years ago, before the pandemic on a different show. And, when the lockdown happened we were saying, what are we going to do? Should we continue with the show that we were doing? What's another opportunity that we can do? And we kept coming back to The GOLDEN GIRLS as being a beloved, hilarious, fraught with, you know, energy and, and buzz. So we just kept coming back. We were looking for some scripts that existed that were out there, you know, other GOLDEN GIRLS parody shows. And we just weren't finding exactly what we were looking for. So then we just decided to do it on our own and came up with a script, a writer and all that stuff.

Our producers are Murray and Peter, and they are synonymous with the drag world, with, RuPaul's Drag Race, The Drag Queen Christmas, and Hater’s Roast, and all those fun, viral moments so they understand this world a lot. So that's how we decided to do it. You know, sometimes it takes a bigger foot to fill such iconic shoes, like the GOLDEN GIRLS. So I think casting them as male actors, female impersonators just elevates that humor to another level. And, you know, when a man's wearing a dress, in a way, he can kind of get away with a few more things.

BWW: How is it you channeled Blanche's iconic southern charm while adding that sort of personal touch that actors have to bring to a performance?

VINCE: I love Blanche so much. Playing her is like water off a duck's back. She's very, very, very confident. I think that’s wonderful. And, and I think I maybe have a little bit of that blind confidence. So I love that. And I just think that she's a fabulous larger than life character. So, yeah, I think that's like how I identify it on a personal level. We kind of just live in our characters, maybe 24/seven, but we did have the opportunity to have a few weeks off in the summer. We had about five weeks off, a little hiatus, and when we were opening in Cleveland, for the next leg of the tour, we were all kind of rusty and it was like, okay, let's get out there. You know, I’ve got to find the voice again, and I’ve got to see how she walks and stuff all over again and I was having a really difficult time. And Adam, who plays Rose, he said, go put your shoes on. That's that's how you do it. You know, once you put your shoes on, you're such a badass. I tell you, the second I put those shoes on, I was, “Hello, I'm back, I'm here!” The costume is something that really helps me. It helps me out, especially the shoes and the wig a little bit, because it's so tall and big. I feel like Sweeney Todd, when he has his knives back. “At last, my arm is complete!” It's like me with the shoes. 

BWW:  Is there a moment in the show that is your favorite?

VINCE: I think it changes every day. What's really fun and special about our show is we have a lot of improv in the show. There's a lot of controlled freedom, a lot of green lights, and we revel in being able to crack each other up onstage. It's super fun for us and in turn, fun for the audience. It keeps the show really fun and fresh for us. And we really love adapting the show to where we are. Right now we're in Canada, which is super fun. We haven't been international with the show and we felt like some of these jokes aren't going to work. Some of them are just a little too specific because they're super topical and they're just for the U.S.. So we started researching. We're like, okay, what jokes can we change and how do we change it and how can we make them for Canada? And they have just been like losing their minds.

So we're coming to Austin and we’re excited to see what we're going to learn about Austin and how we can make not only the 12 shows that we'll be doing special for the people who show up that evening, but each individual show, how can we make it kind of fun to what's going on in the world around us, and specifically what's going on in the area and the town that we're in. Sometimes, my favorite moment can be a little ad lib that I decided  to throw into the show to get one of the guys to laugh. And then sometimes my favorite moment is when Stan has a little joke at the end of the show that he makes very specific to the area that we're in, but he doesn't tell any of us before, and sometimes I'll cry losing my mind laughing because it can change at a moment's notice. We keep the show fun and fresh every night.

BWW: That is exciting. So what you're saying is that we should come to see the show more than once?

VINCE: I mean, you said it, not me. But, yeah, it's live theatre, so right out the gate, you're never going to get the same show twice, but we, we kind of took that and said, “Okay, well, hold my beer. Let's elevate that experience even more.” So it's really fun. It’s just been so fun to see that evolution. I mean, I wouldn't say that everybody started this process with the same level of improvisational skills. I was very fortunate. You mentioned the Ringwald theatre in my bio, which is my theatrical home in Michigan, where I had some amazing mentors and teachers and peers that completely helped me reimagine the way I had approached theatre and improv. That sleight of hand theatrically is a foundation at the Ringwald. So when we started doing this show, I thought “Let me see how I can have fun with this,” and now everybody in the show has become an expert in that specific little part of the craft.

BWW: Is there anything else that is connected here that particularly supports you to do this show?

VINCE: At the Ringwald, I was just an actor. I went to school in New York, I did musical theatre. I was always a little tender ingenue, you know, leading man, a comedian. And, I did some national tours, and I did some performing abroad. But at some point I decided to go back home. I thought, I'll look into teaching or whatever's next for me. I was itching to be back to my family, and there was a new up and coming theatre at the Ringwald which had started. And their mission was, LGBTQ stories. I went and auditioned for RENT and I was like, I'll be Mark or Roger. But they cast me as Angel, and I was kind of, afraid. I've never put on heels or anything like that. It'll expose me, but I decided to do the show anyway. And I had a great time. The Ringwald is run by a wonderful group of men who are some of the most important people in my life. They just gave me so much confidence there, and they’re unapologetic. The art that they do is unapologetic. The stories that they tell are amplifying, and they also showed me that you show up and you go to work for the people who are there, and you do the best job that you can do, no matter the circumstances.

BWW; Do you have rituals other than the shoes that you bring before you do the show?

VINCE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have so much fun. The show starts for us like two hours before curtain. That's when we start getting into makeup. And, Adam, who plays Rose, is the house DJ. And he gets us going through music. Right now, we've been listening to Canadian artists, while we're here in Canada. So we're doing a lot of, like, Joni Mitchell and Rufus Wainwright. That's how we start, and we love to get ready together. We'll go to these gorgeous performing arts centers and theatres where there's 17 million dressing rooms. We could all be in our own space, but we'll ask if there is a chorus room so that we can all get dressed together. It’s how we find connection to each other. The makeup is its own ritual, too. It takes us quite a bit of time and the process is the same for the most part. So it really helps us lock in.

BWW: That's wonderful. What do you hope those of us who attend the Golden Girls take away from it?

VINCE: I like to think that people will leave feeling the evening was curated and created just for them. I love being a touring actor. The ability to change it up every night makes it so much more fun for us. Just reading comments, interviews and stuff, I know that it makes it special for the audience. I want them to feel “the show was made just for me, tonight in this space, in this community that I live in.” I just think it's super special. That's something that live theatre can do. You know, you can't get that with the movie.

BWW: Is there anything else you would like for us to know, about the show or about you?

VINCE: If you love the Golden Girls you have to come and see the show. You just have to. It's just a prerequisite. And if you aren't familiar with the Golden Girls, our show is not inside baseball. We paint a pretty broad picture so that if you're the husband who's being dragged to come to the show by your wife, and you've never seen an episode of Golden Girls, you're going to laugh, you're going to have a good time. The show is for everybody. It's not just for one group of people.There is something for everyone in the show that we have crafted. So please, please, please, check us out.

Murray and Peter Present

THE GOLDEN GIRLS, THE LAUGHS CONTINUE

Story By Robert Leleux

Directed By Eric Swanson

McCullough Theatre on UT at Austin Campus

December 10th through December 22nd

Must be 18 or older to purchase tickets, here.

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