“We have definitely become an anchor to them,” said D’Arcy Drollinger, San Francisco’s inaugural drag laureate and the owner of Oasis, who also plays Rose Nylund in the annual live re-creations of classic Golden Girls episodes every December at the Victoria.
It’s also, Drollinger adds, a non-union house.
“That made it accessible for smaller productions like ours, because there are very few others—and then you jump way up after that in terms of seats,” he said.
In spite of the April death of drag legend Heklina, Golden Girls Live confirmed that it will return to the Victoria for the holidays this year, with Coco Peru stepping in to play the bitingly witty Dorothy Zbornak.
The Victoria contains all the trappings of an old, multipurpose theater. The plaster on the walls is so delicate and stained by nicotine that paint jobs never last long. Mae West, the brashest dame of all, played there. Concessions keep the whole thing afloat, led by the popcorn machine. It has 2K projectors for films, and—the Correas claim—it’s haunted by benevolent ghosts, who have given musicians a gauzy, gooey feeling of positivity.
Nonetheless, Robert Correa said, it’s hard to explain the complexities of owning such a business to outsiders.
If someone owns the most successful theater in San Francisco, then “they’re the most successful theater in San Francisco because they lose less money than anybody else. That makes success.”