Those of you who are sick of hearing me gush about Frank Ferrante, go find something else on the Internet to read. In fact, I'll make it easy for you. Here's a link to a porn site for you.
For the rest of you: Saturday evening, I took a mob to see my pal Frank turn himself into Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush right before our eyes at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. The place was full of WonderCon attendees, and not just those I brought.
The transformation is in itself amazing. Frank enters as Frank and as one member of my party commented, "He looks nothing like Groucho." And then he does a little of this and a little of that…and next to me, my friend Paul Dini gasped out loud. Suddenly, right there on stage, we had Groucho Marx. In person.
What's really stunning, and perhaps I've said this when I've raved before about Frank, is that he not only looks like Groucho — that part's not that hard — but he moves like him, he sounds like him, he dances like him, he sings like him…
And here's the amazing thing: He even thinks like him.
Much of the show is ad-lib, bantering with the audience…and even when Frank is in his script, he doesn't get very far before he's off it, making asides and then making asides about his asides in the grand tradition. The utter lack of self-importance is so comforting. Another member of my expedition, the lovely artist Wendy Pini, made this observation to me this morning. She said, "I was never a big fan of Groucho but Frank made me love him. Frank brought out the pixie in him." This is the younger Groucho that Frank is playing — from (roughly) Cocoanuts through half-past A Day at the Races, which is when Groucho was his pixiest.
Oh, and I should mention Frank's excellent pianist and straight man, Jim Furmston. Jim adds just the air of dignity that Groucho was always so good at getting rid of.
Everyone in my group had a good time, especially me. Matter of fact, I liked Frank so much I'm going to see him again, a week from tomorrow. He's doing one show, a matinee, on March 8 at the La Mirada Theatre in La Mirada, California…and Frank tells me that Miriam Marx, Groucho's daughter, will be in attendance. For details on how you can be, go visit this website. And for the whole schedule of where Frank will be and when he might be in your neck of the woods, check out this page.
Note if you will that on March 15, he'll be at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. This is where the Marx Brothers were once on the bill with a monologist named Art Fisher. Mr. Fisher had this thing for nicknames ending in "o" and during a backstage poker game, it is said, he began referring to Julius Marx as "Groucho," to Adolph Marx as "Harpo" and so on. The names somehow stuck and Show Biz History was made. Needless to say, Frank continues to do the name of Groucho proud.
[Edited to fix a questionable factual assertion I made when I wrote this, on account of I'm exhausted.]