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
I enjoyed The Last Laugh a lot, while never quite buying into it as a piece of drama. For the first half of its 80-minute running time, you think this superstar joke-off might be heading somewhere — and even if it isn’t, the interplay is so good that it’s fun just being in the room with these take-offs of one-offs. Damian Williams has enormous dishevelled authority as Cooper, playing with his props, firing back at Monkhouse’s ruminative smarm with rough banter of his own.
The script doesn’t dig deep, but still cuts below the surface, broaching what lasts, and what doesn’t, and the way we must all take our final bow. Golding’s contribution perhaps risks the greatest disappointment, given how adored Morecambe was, but even if he trades on a roster of familiar mannerisms – the raised eyebrows and forced chuckles, that pipe-puffing insouciance – he beautifully catches the essence of the star. And when he takes to a chair to strum and sing With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock, we ascend to a cloud nine where being innocuously daft is all. If we’re left wanting more, maybe that’s the point.
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
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