An Evening With Frank Ferrante...

Yeah, yeah...I know what the graphic to the left says: An Evening With Groucho. That's the official title of how I spent tonight, but really when you go to see Frank Ferrante as the one, the only Groucho Marx, what you really get is an evening with Frank. And while Frank stays Groucho all night long, he leaves his written act as much as the original Julius Marx strayed from the scripts of George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and others. Watching Frank do Groucho is the closest any of us will ever get to seeing Groucho in his Broadway heyday, when every night was a different show and Kaufman himself had to pause in mid-sentence because he felt he actually heard one of the original lines he had written.

Tonight, at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, Frank took the stage. Literally. He was sitting in the audience at the start of the show, when his musical accompanist, Jim Furmston, started the night with a piano medley of Marx Brothers music. He was the guy who kept applauding. After Jim's opening number, Frank got up from the audience, introduced himself and the show and donned Groucho's traditional greasepaint mustache and eyebrows and trademark glasses. And from then on, it was like the audience was at a seance and Groucho was being channeled onstage by Ferrante.

The show itself--that is the SCRIPTED show--is an enjoyable history lesson about the boys, primarily their life in vaudeville, Broadway and films. Little is said about Groucho's later life, including You Bet Your Life, and in fact, Ferrante is "Movie Groucho" all throughout the show. He sings all the great Groucho film songs including songs from Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup, plus the great "Dr. Hackenbush" song dropped from A Day at the Races, and what could be the greatest Groucho song of all, "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady," from At the Circus. He also sings such Groucho standards as "Shoe Me A Rose," "Omaha, Nebraska," and "Father's Day." The show itself is very reminiscent of Groucho's 1970s stage show, An Evening With Groucho, both in song and storytelling.

But--and here's where Frank really, really shines--Groucho literally comes to life when he interacts with the audience. And that's the brilliance of both the show and Frank, because without donning "older" make-up, or sitting on a stool behind a podium, Frank invokes the Groucho of You Bet Your Life, "TV Groucho," as I call him, by jumping off the stage and talking to the audience. He was pretty merciless with a couple of couples in the first row, one of which was a donor to the Center for the Arts. The woman he was with, "Kumiko" (supposedly, but looking at the list of donors in the program, when you look for the gentleman's semi-unusual first name, there's only one such person, so I'm thinking Kumiko was an alias), was one of those people who gets intensely embrassed when anyone calls attention to them. So, naturally Frank played with her all night long, even sending someone from the audience out to buy a bourbon for her so she'd loosen up (she drank it in one straight shot). They were good sports, (The man even allowed Frank to pump his leg, ala Harpo during one song. I said PUMP, with a P. Get your minds out of the gutter. The very idea. I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.) Other targets for Frank were the couple who showed up in the second act (they thought it started at 8:00pm). "Escondido's finest," he called them. And the father and son from San Diego. Frank took the 10-year-old son up on the stage and gave him a greasepaint mustache. The kid was a great sport, too. Frank worked pretty much the entire first-floor audience, threatening at one point to come up to the balcony (I half expected it to happen). The balcony was rowdy and Frank kept mentioning them, just to have them make more noise.

The audience was an older-skewing (I said SKEWING. NOW STOP IT.), appreciative crowd, and was about 3/4 full. The show flew by, running about 90 minutes or so, with a 20-minute intermission. Ferrante's singing voice is wonderful and his musical accompanist, Jim Furmston, who has been with Frank for over 20 years, is great at the piano. It's a bare bones set: the piano, a leather overstuffed chair, an old-fashioned divan, and a make-up desk that Frank uses once and only once at the beginning. No frills. A simple spotlight. A hat-tree for Captain Spaulding's pith helmet. (I said PITH. And you're really starting to pith me off, so stop it. I've been waiting since the first paragraph to use that joke.)

The highlight of the show, for me, personally, came afterwards. I hung around while Frank and Jim signed VHS copies of Frank's Groucho: A Life In Revue, which is also due out at the end of the month on DVD (click here for details). I stayed until the end of the line and had a little introduction to myself all planned out in my head, and when I got up to re-introduce myself to Frank, he held out his hand and said, "Gary, I'm so glad you came." He remembered me! I was really quite touched by that. Seems he had Googled himself last week to see what kind of press was being done for the show, came across this very blog and remembered my comic and the times we met in the past. How cool is that? It was the perfect personal capstone to a great evening at the theater, an evening not only with the one, the only Groucho, but also the one, the only Frank Ferrante.

(You can read more about Frank and his shows at Grouchoworld.com. We've also added this site to our permanent list of "Other Sites of Interest," to the right.)

Comments

[Frank Ferrante]

Dear Gary,
Thank you for sharing what I do with your readers. I have always felt privileged to perform as Groucho and I am grateful for your recognizing my love for the one, the only...It was wonderful seeing in Escondido. Keep up your good work! Warm wishes, Frank Ferrante
P.S. Skew you all! FF

[Gary]

Rob and Shell,

You are both correct, sirs! I stand corrected (in my orthopedic shoes).

[Rob]

I was at the show as well, and your review is right on. One minor quibble: the "leg-pumping" you mention is actually something Groucho does in "Animal Crackers" during the piano scene with Chico playing the "Anvil Chorus." He did hang his leg over the arm of the little kid (Justin?), Harpo-style, at another point, however. (And didn't you love the way Justin followed Frank around in the Groucho crouch?)

[David Carroll]

I saw Frank as Groucho in "Animal Crackers" six years ago in DC with my son, who was 11 at the time.

He really is something special, and it was a night my son and I will always remember. Glad he's still doing what he does best.

[Shell]

Not to quibble, but I think that you spelled "skewed" incorrectly. True, "scewed" sounds better, and dirtier, and more worthy of malapropism (which you should stop doing or you'll go blind), but the correct word is "skewed."