Hooray for Captain Spaulding!
Frank Ferrante's Groucho — his delightful evening as comedian Groucho Marx filmed during Ferrante's Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park performances in November-December 2017 — finally can be seen on the Tri-State airwaves.
PBS stations across the country have been broadcasting the 90-minute special since April 1. Frank Ferrante's Groucho comes to Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky at 3 a.m. Friday (tomorrow) on the statewide Kentucky Education Television KET2 network available here on Covington's WCVN-TV (Channel 54.2).
Cincinnati's WCET-TV plans to air Frank Ferrante's Groucho 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 1, on CET Arts (Channel 48.3). I've asked programmers for WCET-TV, WPTO-TV and Dayton's WPTD-TV if Groucho will repeat on any of the stations. I'll update this story when I get a response.
Full disclosure: I've been a Groucho Marx fan all my life, and a Frank Ferrante fan for at least half that long. He's amazing as Groucho. With passion and precision, he performs Groucho's funniest one-liners and songs as politician Rufus T. Firefly, professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, opportunistic agent Otis B. Driftwood and Capt. Jeffrey T. Spaulding, the African explorer. It was as if Groucho, who died in 1977 at age 86, was entertaining the Cincinnati audience.
Here's my interview with Ferrante from Nov. 16, 2017, during his run at the Shelterhouse Theatre.
