Who's On First?

For those of you familiar with the famous Abbott and Costello routine, the title of this post will be immediately meaningful. For those of you who don't know it, you can see it on YouTube, because everyone should know who's on first.

But nobody knows it better than Charles, because he had to perform it live for three nights in a row when the Middle School of the American School of Paris put on their spring musical with Charles as one of the stars in a great ensemble cast of young actors. You can watch the first few minutes of it above.

They sang, they danced, they did comedy routines and commercial jingles from the 40s, 50s and 60s.

The first act was the 40s and they started with a radio show sponsored by Winston cigarettes ("singing "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should"), a Marx brothers routine, excerpts from War of the Worlds. We also heard the Chicita banana jingle and the Andrews sisters sang "Boogie, Woogie Bugle Boy," as well as Charles and Max doing "Who's On First?" (photo above).


Then we went to the 50s where Charles and Max sang the Everley Brothers hit "Bye, bye Love" (with Charles doing harmonies) and backed up a boy doing a credible imitation of Elvis, doing Blue Suede Shoes (the backup duo in photo above). A girl in Grade Six with a huge amount of poise and a great voice did "Teenager in Love." Charles and she later danced the jitterbug. We also saw Lucille and Ethel replaying the candy factory scene (also on YouTube if you've forgotten) and we had an impressive performance of "Johnny be Goode."


Then it was on to the 60s where it was all Woodstock, peace and love. We heard Deja Vu and several numbers from the musical Hair, including the closing number "Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sunshine". The costumes were fabulous as you can see above (spot Charles in purple with the beads). Watch the final number on YouTube.



We had a great time watching him and, despite some nerves, he really enjoyed doing it. And now we can have a performance of "Who's On First?" whenever we want with Charles doing both parts.

See all the photos on Flikr or view the slideshow.