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.
__Assisted Perfromances:__
Captioned, 15 March, 2:30pm
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.
It’s refreshing to see how well Cooper, Monkhouse and Morecambe get on, rather than the antagonism bordering on cliché that we tend to get in bio-dramas about comedians in theatre or film. Hendy has them gently ribbing each other – particularly about Monkhouse’s big book of carefully pre-prepared jokes – but affectionately, and out of love for what they do. And we get a lot about the history of British comedy through the trio’s reminiscences about who they’ve worked with and admired. It’s often pretty illuminating, even if Hendy plays it safe by steering clear of really addressing the sexism, homophobia and racism underlying the period on which he’s focused.
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
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