"The greatest living interpreter of Groucho Marx's material," Frank Ferrante will appear in An Evening With Groucho, Thursday, October, 18, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. at the John F. Welsh Auditorium in the Natrona County High School. From Animal Crackers to A Night at the Opera, co-author Morrie Ryskind called him "the only actor aside from Groucho who delivered my lines as they were intended."
Discovered in 1985 by Groucho's son playwright Arthur Marx when Ferrante was attending the University of Southern California Division of Drama, Ferrante went on to portray Groucho from age 15 to 85 in the New York, London and PBS television versions of Arthur's play. Ferrante was 23 years old when Groucho: A Life in Revue opened off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in 1986.
Ferrante played the Groucho inspired roles off-Broadway in The Cocoanuts in 1996 and regional productions of Animal Crackers at Goodspeed Opera House, The Huntington Theatre, Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, Paper Mill Playhouse and Arena Stage.
Ferrante acts and directs throughout the region, most notably at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre where he directed and developed the premiere of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Old Wicked Songs. There Ferrante starred as playwright/director George S. Kaufman in the one-man play written by Frank entitled By George.
Since 2001, Ferrante performs his improvisationally based comedy in the European style cirque show Teatro ZinZanni playing an outrageous Latin lover named Caesar. In Zinzanni, Ferrante played opposite legendary cabaret star Liliane Montevecchi, Joan Baez, Sally Kellerman and The Motels' Martha Davis. In 2004, he became a question on the television program Jeopardy.
