The Last Laugh
Theatre Royal Brighton
until 15th February 2025
Direct from a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Last Laugh is a brand-new laugh-a-minute play which re-imagines the lives of three of Britain’s all-time greatest comedy heroes – Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe and Bob Monkhouse. Filled with great gags and touching stories, The Last Laugh is nostalgic and poignant and guaranteed to have the audience in stitches. The play is written and directed by the award-winning Paul Hendy, and stars Bob Golding as Morecambe, Simon Cartwright as Monkhouse and Damian Williams as Cooper.
I first saw the play nearly a year ago prior to it’s Edinburgh run at the Eric Morecambe Centre in Harpenden and was convinced it couldn’t be improved. However, Hendy has lengthened it by fifteen minutes and if anything the performances from the cast of three have just got better.
The very essence of comedy is explored during a captivating eighty five minutes during which you start to believe you are watching the genuine comedy greats. Cartwright is astonishing as Monkhouse (not an easy man to embody), analysing what lies behind comedy and with an encyclopaedic knowledge of jokes and who wrote them. For him it is the writer who deserves the credit although he would say that as the author of so many including ones that the others unknowingly use in their acts.
Golding is remarkable as Eric Morecambe. His energy is infectious and it is Golding who demonstrates his extraordinary versatility with equally accurate impersonations of the likes of Bernie Winters, George Formby (complete with ukulele), the irrepressible Max Miller, Robb Wilton and Max Bygraves. He also has an excellent singing voice and takes the lead during the production’s musical numbers.
And then there’s the comedian’s comedian. Williams is simply superb. There is an added scene involving a white gate which left last night’s audience howling with laughter. Cooper had an unrivalled ability to get a laugh without saying anything at all. Williams imitates this and leaves a silence at one point which elicits laugh after laugh after laugh before breaking the pause with impeccable timing. Like Cooper, Williams is clearly a natural clown.
The deliberate irony of this play is that while these three comedy legends discuss what’s funny and what’s funny funny and even what’s funny funny funny, it is the language and the structure of the play that makes it such an entertaining evening. Hendy’s play is nostalgic without painting these men as flawless. They all have their demons and their lives to deal with – Cooper with his obvious issues with alcohol, the workaholic Morecambe who misses his children and Monkhouse who experiences a painful divorce and has one son with cerebral palsy and another whom he was estranged from for 13 years. Only his adopted daughter survived him.
Hendy also directs which is not always a successful combination, however, he has assembled a first-class cast and all three of the actors really capture something about what makes these funnymen tick. They spark off each other and Hendy’s skill produces a genuine feeling of spontaneity which draws the audience into the slightly haunting and remarkably realistic dressing room set designed by Lee Newby.
This is a very, very funny funny funny play and it is also deeply moving. We know what happens to them in the end and there are moments where you hear the audience almost hyperventilate such as when Tommy quietly says “I hope I don’t die out there!” Cooper notoriously died from a heart attack during Live from Her Majesty’s in front of 12 million television viewers. The play will transfer to the Noel Coward Theatre in London for 4 weeks opening on 25th February before moving to New York and then embarking on a 9-week UK tour. Don’t take my word for it, go and see it. You’ll struggle to see anything better this year as this outstanding production knocks the spots off most of what the West End has to offer and it does it just like that!
Reviewer: Patric Kearns
Photo: Pamela Raith
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐