'The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes,' an annual tradition from a quartet of SF drag queens going back 17 years, returns this holiday season in much fancier digs than where it began. And Friday's opening included a surprise guest.

Friday marked opening night of this year's truncated run of The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes — typically a cash cow for Oasis owner D'Arcy Drollinger and her three compatriots portraying Rose, Dorothy, Blanche, and Sofia. This year they get to do fewer performances in a much bigger house: The Curran Theatre.

The Curran was packed Friday for this year's premiere, which for the second year features Miss Coco Peru in the role of Dorothy — following the untimely passing of Heklina, who had spearheaded these performances for a decade and a half, in 2023. As usual, the show consists of reenactments of two Golden Girls episodes, with some Christmas-if-ication added — the original series ran for seven seasons and only ever aired two Christmas episodes.

This year's episodes are the hilarious Season 2 episode "Isn't It Romantic?", in which Dorothy's lesbian friend Jean comes to stay with the girls after losing her partner of many years, and develops a crush on Rose; and the Season 3 episode "Dorothy's New Friend," in which Dorothy meets local romance novelist Barbara Thorndyke, who turns out to be a snob and a racist.

Michael Phillis (Thighs Wide Shut, Patty From HR) is hilariously haughty as Barbara Thorndyke, and Manuel Caneri also helps chew some scenery as as the lovelorn Jean, and as a waiter in the second act.

Once again, Miss Coco Peru does a terrific job mastering the cadences of the late Bea Arthur, as does Holotta Tymes in her impression of Estelle Getty as Sophia. Matthew Martin and D'Arcy Drollinger ably return to their roles as Blanche and Rose, respectively, with Drollinger making extra use of breaking the fourth wall to mug for the audience whenever she can.

And, once again, the party atmosphere is kept afloat with a Christmas song sing-along during the "commercial breaks," led by accompanist Tom Shaw — though I might kindly suggest that, especially in the second act as the audience gets antsy, maybe he doesn't need to go into second and third verses during these breaks.

At the close of Friday's performance, Drollinger brought a surprise guest on stage, telling the audience, "We were so surprised she even said 'yes'!"  It was Cindy Fee, the original singer of the TV show's theme song, "Thank You For Being a Friend."

Fee sang the theme once through, to great cheers, and then led the audience in a sing-along as well. You can hear some of her rendition below.

The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes plays through December 22 at the Curran (445 Geary Street). Find tickets here.