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"Abbott & Costello in the Catskills"
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Comedians, Joe Bev and Bob Greenberg can custom tailor an original Abbott & Costello show to any need and write new material to fit any occasion, plus deliver authentic and exciting performances of Bud & Lou's classic routines, including "Who's On First?"
The first time Joe Bevilacqua (Joe Bev) performed Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First?" was in 1975 at a high school play audition. He was a 16 year old kid with braces and a peach fuzz mustache trying to be Bud to his 17 year old friend's Lou.
In 1976, after winning a contest at the first Nostalgia Convention at The Staler-Hilton Hotel in New York City, Bev and friend performed Abbott & Costello all around the New York-New Jersey area and even did "Who's on First?" on WOR-TV's"The Joe Franklin Show". Listen to audio from the broadcast here.
"I had my braces removed the day before," admits Bev, who went to successful show business career.
Bev stopped performing Abbott & Costello after a falling out with his partner in 1980. The breakup was detailed in a story for National Public Radio. Listen to the story here.
This year, when Bev was cast as the MC of a Borscht Belt comedy show in his home of the Catskills, he was asked to pick a character to play.
"I chose to host the evening as Bud Abbott. Now I needed a Costello. My old partner was out of the question," explains Bev.
"Luckily, I found Bob Greenberg, an enormously talented comedian who has been doing Lou Costello his whole life with other Abbotts. Like me, Bob is a trained professional actor with major credits including Saturday Night Live."
In 1993, Greenberg had also been on the last week of TV's "The Joe Franklin Show" where he did impressions of Lou Costello and Curly Howard.
For three nights, Bob & Joe performed not only "Who's on First?" together but wrote and improvised an entire night of hilarious audience pleasing comedy surrounding the music acts, dancers and magician.
They had never met before and only spoke on the phone twice. Yet they BECAME Abbott & Costello on stage!
They looked like them, sounded like them, listened to each other and improvised many great moments, and worked the audience as if we had been together forever.