"The four puppeteers, who are visible onstage, do a decent job of capturing the well-known voices and mannerisms as they work through a scattershot story...The play, though, doesn’t aspire to much beyond being an exchange of zingers...The setup/punch line style of humor here thus often just feels wan; only a few jokes are home runs. The play seems to be relying on its cachet as a gay-audience favorite, but it doesn’t play directly enough to that audience to be as fun as a good drag show."
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"It's really not much of a parody (it's difficult to parody something that is already very funny on its own). Rather, this feels like one regular episode stretched out over an hour and a half, creating slackness in the comedy that is only occasionally remedied by the bravura performances of the cast...Super fans of the show will definitely enjoy spending time with these characters...Still, they might get just as much enjoyment (if not more) by staying home and switching on the TV."
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"All the expected elements are in place...All that's missing are the laughs...What is on offer here is a quartet of young puppeteers...All four deliver the personas created by the original actresses, but they simply aren't Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White, all of whom could turn the limpest gag into a zinger. Then again, the writing here is so weak that one wonders if even these four great ladies might not have found themselves at a loss."
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"Had Rockefeller wanted this to look and feel more like the real thing, I don't know that he could have swung it. That fidelity, though, comes at a heavy cost: Once the tribute-paying wears thin, so does the show itself...Assuming you want nothing more from it, 'That Golden Girls Show!' does get the basic idea right, and, thanks to the outstanding puppet design and direction of Joel Gennari is loaded with individual moments any fan of the series will adore."
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"Unfortunately, the talented cast and the fond memories don’t prevent 'That Golden Girls Show!' from feeling a bit long...The problem isn’t its length, exactly. It’s the structure of Rockefeller’s writing...Rockefeller’s desire to work in as many references as possible have clearly trumped the demand for a tight narrative...Clearly, Rockefeller is quite aware of why so many people love this show; if only his love for it didn’t overtake his attention to storytelling."
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"These puppeteers are extremely fine actors—in this situation, one of the downsides, as we are drawn so much of the time to their presence and perfect interpretations (vocally and physically). But I must say, the crafty rod puppet maker/director Joel Gennari has more than captured each of these gals in expression and movement making them hard to forget...For devotees of 'The Golden Girls,' there were numerous laugh-out-loud sequences and big guffaws."
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"The puppeteers themselves are multi-talented...Each one gives a full and considered acting performance right alongside the puppet versions of their characters...The story line does disappointingly veer off from a typical 'Golden Girls' episode, while also being a little bolder in its language. It may have served the show better to continue along the same lines as it began with in the first act. Having said that, the quality puppeteering and acting do make for an overall enjoyable experience."
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"‘That Golden Girls Show!’ may be subtitled a parody, but it’s really more an homage...The show's gleam comes from how well the performers capture the personalities of the beloved stars with puppets that wonderfully caricaturize their originals. The script itself could almost stand in for a 'Golden Girls' episode; the problem is that, for all its humor, it simply fails to be as funny as the series, and depends more on our nostalgic responses than on anything very original."
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