Direct from a sell-out run at 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 be London’s best comedy night out.
The Last Laugh 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.
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Captioned, 15 March, 2:30pm
If it occasionally slides into over-sentimentality and mawkishness, particularly in the closing moments, that feels forgivable. The memory of these comedy greats is fading fast – it’s over 40 years since Cooper and Morecambe died – kept alive largely by YouTube clips and Christmas repeats. Monkhouse’s insistence on identifying the provenance of jokes (many of them his own) seems an apt reminder of our wider debt to that generation, on whose shoulders today’s booming comedy sector stands. This is a welcome chance to remember what made them so beloved, and at a brisk 80 minutes, it leaves you aching for more – just like the comics themselves.
These three character studies show us the price the men paid for their success, but they also show us how they did it, genius, as ever, one part God-given alchemy and two parts bloody hard work. The pacy 80 minutes is leavened by some of their greatest hits, the punchlines, the sketches and the songs that live forever in the hearts of those who saw them. Unlike so many biopics these days, we’re never in any doubt as to what made these men what they were, the focus never straying to wives, neuroses or an overlay of 21st century hot-button issues.
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
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