Reaching London’s West End after a run at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Paul Hendy’s funny and tender love letter to classic comedy, The Last Laugh, imagines a dressing room where Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse, and Eric Morecambe are getting ready for a show.
Many of us will remember them all: I was watching Live from Her Majesty’s, on TV, age 11, when Cooper collapsed on stage and died. A truly sombre moment as he went with the audience’s laughter in his ears, sure it was another one of his gags.
Here, in the play, Cooper (Damian Williams) is an ailing man, still the funny clown but also plagued with boredom and a strain of the morose. A running gag around a malfunctioning duck raises a smile; a piece of business with a white gate proves that ‘funny’ doesn’t have to be intellectual.
Monkhouse (Simon Cartwright), caked in tan, is a chiseller of jokes, honing each one to wordy perfection. Best remembered as a premier game show host with an unmistakable voice, he started his comedy career in a double act with Denis Goodwin, an awkward chap who didn’t translate well into a TV performer and who eventually took his own life after the partnership ended.
And then there’s Morecambe (Bob Golding), with the glasses, bonhomie, and the well-crafted mannerisms. He talks about his long partnership with Ernie Wise, about missing his children while on tour and warmly pays tribute to George Formby, one of the old-time comedians pictured on the dressing room wall.
The Last Laugh works whether you are a comedy connisseur (Max Miller, Sid Field, Robb Wilton, Will Hay, Max Wall, Tony Hancock, Sid James, Arthur Askey, and Laurel & Hardy are mentioned) or someone who is too young to really remember even Cooper and Morecambe (who both passed away in 1984). It boasts note-perfect impersonations, taking what made these three men great to bring them back to life.
Monkhouse’s smugness and almost indulgent relationship to his contemporaries is notable. As the example of a writer-comedian, he sees the process of being funny from both sides, while Cooper uses his pauses, big build, and guffaws to simply be ‘funny funny’. My mum has a story about seeing Cooper on the bill at a seaside show supporting Nat Jackley years ago where he came on stage wearing a pair of monkey’s ears. That’s all it took to make the audience crease up.
For Morecambe, being the nominal funny man in a duo who both sought the laughs, finding the funny relied on mining the work of those who went before. A gifted performer in both comic and musical spheres (something Hendy allows Golding to explore here), he seemed effortlessly funny, but all three men talk about the stress of finding what reaches an audience and about the problems of ‘dying’/failing before them.
The Last Laugh is set in a beautifully detailed set by Lee Newby, with posters, props, and three dressing tables. Cooper, Monkhouse and Morecambe clearly have long acquantance and respect; Monkhouse remembers the names of the Morecambe children while Morecambe delicately enquires about Monkhouse’s son, Gary, who has cerebral palsy. Both are well aware of Cooper’s domestic situation of leaving a wife, Dove, at home, and taking a mistress, Mary, on tour.
This is ultimately a (respectful) tribute show to three giants of comedy. Monkhouse died in 2003, so is probably more familiar to younger audience members than the others, but with the repeat channels on TV you are never far away from Cooper or Eric & Ernie. And there’s always YouTube.
Will they be remembered, the trio wonder? Of course, is the resounding answer, as the press night crowd of critics and a Who’s Who of comedy and TV personalities stood and cheered before a chorus of “Positive Thinking” sent us out into the cold night air.
4 stars.
The Last Laugh is at the Noel Coward Theatre until 1 Mar; it then goes on tour. For tickets to the West End run, go here with tour details here.
Image credit: Pamela Raith
I spoke with Hendy and the cast last year: read interview here.