Andreas Eriksson saw this posting of a Marx Brothers impersonation in Sweden and sent me this…
It's not often that something Swedish pops up on your website, so why not add some extra info when I can:
That guy playing Groucho is actor Ola Forssmed. The play is a loose adaptation of Animal Crackers, so Forssmed is actually playing Captain Spaulding (Kapten Spoling in the Swedish translation). "Harpo" is seen briefly in the background, he is played by Eva Rydberg (yes, a woman) who also is the manager of the summer theatre where this show was performed in 2007. Chico was also in the show, played by Kim Sulocki.
The show is available on DVD, but not with English subtitles.
That's a shame because several folks wrote to ask if any translations were available and just how the Brothers Marx survived being imported into another language and culture. We already established that the real Groucho is not as funny in Spanish and we once had a video link — I think it's defunct now — that proved the same for German. But when someone is writing for the brothers in another country, what must that be like?
Harpo presumably can survive anything, even a sex change. Chico, I guess, would be simple but for the malaprops. I mean, I assume it's just as easy for a Swedish guy to do a bad Italian accent as it is for a Jewish guy in this country. But Groucho has to be a translator's nightmare. Does anyone out there have more insight into this? And is there a more thankless role for an actor than playing Zeppo in Swedish?