busker

Groucho Soirée

Feb 22, and down to The Playhouse (Box office 842 8569) for Bainbridge Performing Arts' presentation of the talented Frank Ferrante's uncanny portrayal of Groucho.

I needed to relax and guffaw and the rubbery Ferrante was my man, aided by Mr James Furmston's subtle tickling of the ivories.

I arrived early to watch people arrive: Bainbridge theatre-goers don't enter as others do, which makes them a spectacle unto themselves and worth the price of the ticket even before curtain-up.

Bags of un-swagger, plus of course they dress like nowhere else on earth for an evening out.

But they do bring their young - beetle-browed sons and frisky daughters, in dutiful attendance but wondering what on earth they're doing there.

Then the show begins and they know precisely the fun they're in for.

Ferrante has a good intro - coming on in mufti and looking like nothing more than someone's good Jewish son.

As he chatters he sits and makes himself up - a smear here, a daub there - and suddenly before our eyes he's transformed into El G himself.

Wonderful banter with the audience - dang, I'd love to witness duel between FF, our own Improv magicians, and Dame Edna - and spot-on recreation of Groucho himself.

A fitting bookend entertainment for me on BI, seeing as how my first dinner a fortnight's hence in London will be at that showy Dean Street club.

It's after my time there, so I always get appallingly insolent service until my grand hosts turn up, after which it's forelock tugging and lickspittle obsequy which is how it should be.

Sitting observing my fellow audience, I was struck by the beauty of the young lady in the ticket office.

Seeing as how I'm leaving the country - hence little threat as a stalker - and knowing how we don't grow pulchritude like that back home, I made so bold to ask permission to snap her.

I even offered to mail her copies of the snaps but she sensibly slapped me down with the assurance that she doesn't do email. Quite right, too.

Good heavens - such an obvious line. If I overheard some wrinklie trying that fake line on my own girl, I'd lay the horse whip on him before he could say cheese.

Irony of ironies, babelicious as la blondista might have been, just inside the ticket office and seated below view was the Island's real  stunner whom I'd never have *dared* ask to snap but who's worth an aeon of Sports Illustrated calendars.

Wonderful evening and what a good theatre in which to enjoy such an intimate show.

Booking my air ticket, I find that a round-trip costs less than half an elusive one-way ticket, on top of which I've been warned that it's a kamikaze givewaway not to want to return and one gets rolled over something awful by security.

So, anticipating withdrawals, I've booked my non-return to coincide with the BPA's next dazzling show.