TERMS:  Web-only discount $3 per ticket, not available on $15 tickets, limit 10 per customer. 

FRANK FERRANTE (Groucho/Director) is an actor, director, and producer described by The New York Times as “the greatest living interpreter of Groucho Marx’s material.”  Animal Crackers and 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 by Groucho’s son Arthur when Frank was a drama student at the University of Southern California, Frank originated the off-Broadway title role in Groucho:  A Life in Revue (written by Arthur) portraying the comedian from age 15 to 85.  For this role, Frank won 1987’s New York’s Theatre World Award and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award.  He reprised the role in London’s West End and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for “Comedy Performance of the Year.”  Frank played the Groucho role in the off-Broadway revival of The Cocoanuts and has played Captain Spalding in several productions of Animal Crackers winning a Connecticut Critics Circle Award for his portrayal at Goodspeed Opera House and a Helen Hayes nomination in Washington D.C. at Arena Stage.  In Boston in 1988, he played the Huntington Theatre in the record-breaking run of Animal Crackers that landed Frank on the cover of American Theatre magazine.  His other regional roles include Max Prince in Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre (a production which Frank also directed); George S. Kaufman in By George (a new one-man play by Frank); Tom in the farce Perfect Wedding; Oscar in The Odd Couple and leads in The Sunshine Boys, Lady in the Dark and Anything Goes.  Frank recently directed M*A*S*H star Jamie Farr in the Kaufman & Hart comedy George Washington Slept Here and revivals of Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues. In 1995, he directed and developed the world premiere of the Pulitzer finalist Old Wicked Songs.  In 2001, Frank starred in, directed and produced the national PBS television program Groucho:  A Life in Revue. Frank currently stars as the comic lead in the European cirque Teatro Zinzanni in San Francisco and Seattle and next month returns to the Walnut Street Theatre to direct Broadway Bound. For more information on Frank Ferrante’s Groucho, log on to www.grouchoworld.com.

RICHARD TATUM (Chico/Harpo) originally comes from Philadelphia, where he was a member of the acclaimed Philadelphia Area Repertory Theatre, with whom he performed in The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, The Servant of Two Masters and Tartuffe.  He also appeared in Theatre Ariel’s premiere production of Dividends, with the Philadelphia Drama Guild in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and at the Oberlin Theatre Institute he performed with Patrick Stewart in The Tempest. He toured for four years in Plaza Suite starring Lee Meriwether, with whom he also appeared (as Bogie), in Play It Again, Sam with Frank Gorshin in New York. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is the Associate Artistic Director of the award-winning Ark Theatre Company. As an actor with Ark he has performed in A Clockwork Orange, The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abg’d) (which also played at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston) The Servant of Two Masters, The Merchant of Venice, The Erpingham Camp, and most recently Return to the Forbidden Planet; as director, he has mounted On the Verge and their current production of Good.  Also in LA, he has performed at Theatre West in the world premieres of Thornton Wilder’s Sins and Ages, A Hunter’s Obituary, and The Unusual Prospects, plus Re:LAX with Playwrights 6, LA holiday favorite Paquito’s Christmas at the LA Theatre Center, and a host of other shows and theatres.  His film credits include Shakespeare’s Merchant, Starry Night and Being John Malkovich; on TV he has appeared in Spy TV, Red Handed, and Deep Space Nine, and has voiced characters in several video games and animated series (his not-so-secret love).  He has also just finished producing his first CD of political satire, Bushwa!- coming very soon to a website near you!

AMANDA ROGERS (The Girls) returns to the role of ‘The Girls’ having worked this year as an actress, writer and director.  She developed and directed Frank Ferrante in the world premiere of By George for Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre.  She currently writes and directs for the acclaimed cirque show Teatro Zinzanni.  Amanda’s first screenplay Finn was performed as a staged reading starring Academy Award-winning Hilary Swank.  For PBS, Amanda wrote, directed and produced the film Behind the Scenes with Groucho that is still running nationally.  As an actress, Amanda toured the U.S. with Lee Meriwether in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.  Other stage performances include Carol in Laughter on the 23rd Floor at the Walnut Street Theatre, Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra directed by Morris Carnovsky, Abbie in Desire Under the Elms, The Count of Monte Cristo at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, The Foreigner at the Pasadena Playhouse and The Perfect Wedding at the Westport Country Playhouse.  Film and television credits include Batman Returns, Reality Bites, Lawnmower Man II, ER, Ties that Bind, Days of Our Lives as well as numerous television commercials.  Amanda has performed stand-up at the legendary Comedy Store and Improv in Los Angeles.  She has lent her voice to several animated series including Prince Valiant and The Phantom.  Amanda is most proud of her two favorite productions – 2 year-old Lucy and two month-old Dashiell.

CHIP PHILLIPS (Citizen of Freedonia) performed the 19-month run of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at the Stuart Street Playhouse, followed by runs in Reno and Chicago.  Other New England credits include The Phantom Tollbooth (Wheelock Family Theatre), The Gig (Lyric Stage Co.), Lend Me A Tenor (American Stage Festival), Das Barbecu (New Repertory Theatre), The Front Page (Merrimack Rep) and Jackie (Wilbur Theatre).

JIM FURMSTON (Pianist and Musical Director) is a native of Canada and graduate of the U.S.C. Thornton School of Performing Arts.  Jim’s musical interests have always been wide-ranging, being equally at home in both classical and commercial music.  In addition to his work as a ‘session’ player in Los Angeles, he was invited to perform a debut recital at New York’s Lincoln Center and the inaugural program of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles.  In musical theatre, Jim has provided musical direction for such shows as Side by Side by Sondheim, Cabaret and Rocky Horror Picture Show. Jim music directed sold-out performances with Gene Barry at the Algonquin Hotel (Oak Room) and premiered the new work A Peek at a Poet: Langston Hughes with actor James Wheaton.  Jim is the music director for the new Broadway bound musical Haven composed by William Goldstein, lyrics by the late Joe Darion, book by Jerome Coopersmith, and directed by Jerry Friedman.  Jim began his collaboration with Frank Ferrante in 1983 and has accompanied Frank in his one-man show An Evening with Groucho since 1984.  Jim's most recent project is the CD for The Thrift Store Bears  - an illustrated book of poems about teddy bears for all ages.  For more info please go to www. teddytraveler.com.  This coming season Jim can be heard in the pit of Menopause the Musical now playing in Los Angeles.  When Jim is not working on musical projects, he can be found on a Squash Court or in front of his computer tracking the music of the S&P.

ARTHUR MARX (Co-Author) With Robert Fisher, Mr. Marx has co-authored The Impossible Years which starred Alan King and ran for 645 performances on Broadway, Minnie’s Boys, starring Shelley Winters and My Daughter’s Rated X.  Their collaboration, Groucho: A Life in Revue, opened off-Broadway in 1986 to rave reviews and was nominated for a New York Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play.  It opened in London in 1987 and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Comedy Production of the Year.  Arthur Marx has written many magazine pieces, radio and television programs, feature films and books including The Ordeal of Willie Brown, Life With Groucho, Not as a Crocodile, Son of Groucho, Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime (adapted for the recent Martin & Lewis television bio-pic), Red Skelton and The Nine Lives of Mickey Rooney.  He has written for many of the country’s greatest comedians from Milton Berle to Bob Hope to Lucille Ball.  His latest novel Tulip is due out this year.

ROBERT FISHER (Co-Author) has authored or co-authored nearly 400 radio comedies and just over 1,000 television shows. With his partner, Arthur Marx, he has completed his most recent musical The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  The Marx tie goes back several decades, since it was Groucho Marx who gave Mr. Fisher his first job on Groucho’s Pabst Blue Ribbon radio show, when Mr. Fisher was only 19 years old.  Mr. Fisher has been awarded the Emmy (for Make Room for Daddy), and the Sylvania and St. Christopher Awards for television comedy.  Mr. Fisher’s book, The Knight in Rusty Armor, has a large following and is considered by educators and psychologists as a moving life experience.