Attention, Southern Californians! This coming Friday night, you have a rare opportunity to see our friend Frank Ferrante perform his unnatural act, which basically consists of him transforming himself into Groucho Marx for ninety very funny minutes. By "rare," I mean that though he travels the country with it, you usually won't find him Grouchoing anywhere those of us who live in Los Angeles can get to easily. It'll probably be at least a year until your next opportunity and it might well be longer.
Friday evening, May 7, he's doing it down at the newly-refurbished — I hear it's magnificent — Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside, California. This is about an hour's drive from L.A. and a lot of us are making it to see the guy. I've seen him…well, this will be my fifth time, I think, but so much of Frank's show is improvised that I could see it again and again. We're going to car pool down to Riverside, eat first at a restaurant near the theater and then go see a Groucho double-feature. They're running the movie Duck Soup at 6:30 and then F.F. goes on, live and in person, at eight.
Duck Soup has been shown at this theater before, by the way. It opened there first-run on November 26, 1933, sharing the bill with a 20-minute short called Bye-Gones, starring torch singer Ruth Etting.
The restaurant, also by the way, will not be the Old Spaghetti Factory, as I mentioned here once before. We've decided the occasion calls for someplace a little fancier. Which reminds me: When are they going to start opening New Spaghetti Factories?
I have given Frank many a rave here but I can pay him no greater compliment than this: I intend to drive the Pomona Freeway on a Friday afternoon at rush hour in order to see him. If you're anywhere in the vicinity, I suggest you click here to get tickets and join us.