Regular readers of this blog are probably sick of items wherein I rave about my pal, Frank Ferrante. Frank spends about half his year touring in a one-man (plus piano player) show called An Evening with Groucho. In it, Mr. F. creates a jaw-dropping and very funny tour de farce as that Marx fella. I will soon be linking you to a calendar of his upcoming Hackenbushing but in this post, I will not gush about Frank's portrayal of Julius "Groucho" Marx. No, in this post I'm going to gush about his other job.
Frank, you see, has this other identity — a flamboyant, outrageous gent named Caesar who intermittently stars in productions of Teatro ZinZanni…and now, here's the hard part 'cause I have to explain what Teatro ZinZanni is. Imagine a grand tent inside of which you find a swanky restaurant that serves a gourmet meal as a bevy of wonderful food servers and performers put on a show all around you. There are singers, dancers, comedians, acrobats in the style of (the comparison is unavoidable) Cirque du Soleil and artists whose skills are awesome but utterly unidentifiable. This all transpires not on a faraway stage but up close and personal. The aerial acts are practically over your head in the intimate theater. The dancers are sometimes performing not just near your table but actually on it, skillfully not stepping in the fine soup you have just been served.
This is a fine description but I need to explain more. It is sometimes difficult to tell where the attractive wait staff leaves off and the equally attractive cast takes over. Some of each serve you. Some of each entertain you. The performers roam about in character, chatting you up and entertaining you while you dine. That's when they aren't dancing…or hustling you up out of your seat to dance with them. The show is quite interactive…and did I mention the sensational live five-piece band? The compleat ZinZanni experience runs about three hours. They serve you the first course. They perform for a while. Then they serve you the second course and perform while you eat it…and so on. You leave quite well-fed and, of course, utterly entertained.
Two Teatro ZinZanni venues exist in this country — one in Seattle and one in San Francisco. I was at the latter last evening, catching Frank Ferrante and friends in the latest, soon-to-close production. (It will be replaced by an all-new one next week and it'll probably be wonderful though Frank and the other follks I saw won't be in it. Frank is tentatively slated to appear at the Seattle location the middle of next year for a while.) Boy, was he funny. Caesar is allegedly the evening's chef and he keeps popping up throughout the show to describe the bill of fare, woo the leading lady — Cleopatra, of course — and bring audience members up to participate in good-natured scenes and sketches. There's a lot of a certain mustached Marx Brother in Caesar but also plenty of Frank, a very quick-witted improviser indeed. I really enjoyed watching him work.
Which is not to say he's the whole show. Everyone in it is great but I'll only mention the two others we spoke with after the festivities. Dreya Weber plays the breathtaking Cleopatra, looks the part and sings as well as she looks. You'd think that would be enough but she also does a dazzling aerial act and is very funny in her role as Caesar's love interest. Then there's Tim Tyler, an Australian comedian and juggler with a face of pure, unvulcanized rubber and a happy spirit that pervades the room. He does a bit with ping pong balls, blowing them into the air and catching them in his mouth, that is one of the most unforgettable (in a good way) acts I've ever seen. Some of the physical feats, like the couple that runs up and down a big metal pole like Spider-Man and Spider-Woman making out, leave you thinking, "I did not just see that." But you did.
In case you haven't figured it out by now, I had a very good time. Everything was grand, except maybe the most impossible feat of the evening, which turned out to be getting a cab in the rain after the show. For a while there, I thought maybe we'd have to stay until tomorrow night's performance. And you know something? It would have been worth the wait. Thanks, Frank.