Tag: Abbott and Costello
I’ve already written about Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s on First” in this post, which is chock full of interesting stuff, but now I have three more takes on it to share with you.
Here’s a riddle for you: what do the sticky floors of New York City subway cars and dusty, musty books on Elizabethan drama have in common? For the answer, just read on….
Think Abbott & Costello and you think Who’s on First? and other classic verbal routines from the heyday of burlesque. Lots of intricate wordplay, the comic effect multiplied by Lou Costello’s expressive reactions. While Bud Abbott stands there, calm and “reasonable,” his feet firmly planted, Costello’s takes and double-takes convulse his body, a quivering bowl of jello on the verge of spilling over. More robust movement — I’m talking dance, acrobatics, slapstick — is seen less often in their work, which is why I enjoyed the following piece so much.
So here I go again, launching yet another blog feature that I think will repeat on a regular basis. This is reserved for stuff that’s technically not what I would call physical comedy (and I have a pretty broad definition), but that I think would be of interest to the readers of this blog for one reason or another.
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin