7 March 2025
Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the funniest show in the West End and for many years! But you’ll have to be quick to catch it… the strictly limited 4-week season ends on March 22, although its short UK tour will bring it to Richmond Theatre, June 17 – 21.
The writer Paul Hendy is a comedy genius. A lover of 60s and 70s British comedy and variety stars, he has had the inspired idea to bring together 3 of the greatest acts of the 20th century in one dressing room – so, “just like that!” we get lagoubrious, hapless comedy magician Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe (without Little Ern) and gagmaster and TV game show King, Bob Monkhouse, chewing the fat and running the famous gags and routines for a swift 80 minutes of pure nostalgia.
I swear that an ear-to-ear grin never left my face the entire running time from Cooper’s hilarious entrance to poignant farewell, when i found myself wiping away tears. And I was frequently helpless with laughter.
All three actors playing these gods of comedy have portrayed them previously in other highly successful shows and it shows in their ease of delivery and performance: Damian Williams was Cooper in the play, Being Tommy Cooper; Bob Golding was Eric in Morecambe (which Mr Hendy produced and directed at the Fringe in 2009 and would go on to win several awards including the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment during its 2010 West End transfer) and Simon Cartwright was staggeringly good in the 2015 Fringe hit, The Man Called Monkhouse.
The genius idea is to bring them all together. The banter is affectionate; it’s like a comedy love-in. We have no idea if the chaps really loved each other and their work this much. But we’d certainly love it to be true.
There is plenty 0f joshing, particularly by Cooper, who claims not to know or like many things that he clearly does; and from Monkhouse, who consults his famous gag books and claims ownership of much of the Tommy’s “borrowed” material. “I thought this was the comedians’ dressing room”, Eric casually throws out to the room on his warm entrance. He laughs and chuckles along to every gag and delivers a stunning musical number – My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock” – complete with ukelele as George Formby.
Williams, who I have seen regularly in his other role (17 years consecutively in Sheffield) as panto Dame for the very same Mr Hendy (who also wears a panto producer hat each festive season), needs only gather his awkward bulk and to peer haughtily down from under his fez, and we’re laughing. His bewildered entrance in underwear and giant chicken foam feet set me off from the get-go.
Cartwright is, however, a true chameleon – he also pulls off a very convincing Frankie Howerd in Mark Farrelly’s play Howerd’s End – and truly astonishes as the rather staid Monkhouse, with pitch-perfect vocal cadences and a scarily tango-coloured face. In a key moment when the laughter stops, he shows the deep sadness behind the facial animation beautifully, when Morecambe asks if he’d ever fancied working as a double act, forgetting that Bob did for 14 years in the 60s with Denis Goodwin, who was a great gag writer (he went on to work for Bob Hope in the US) but an unsure TV performer, who would later commit suicide at the height of Bob’s TV game show fame on The Golden Shot. Here Bob’s fascinated by Tommy and Eric’s “funny bones”. It comes less naturally to him, a scholar of comedy but no natural clown – “i need the punchlines to land. Every time”.
Lee Newby has created a fabulously atmospheric set, a shabby, cramped room where you can practically smell the damp or is it the sweat of thousands of acts who’ve trod the boards before them? – with a wall of ancient variety posters hailing Laurel and Hardy among many others, and another wall of framed b/w photos featuring late, great comedy legends such as Tony Hancock, Sid James, Arthur Askey and Max Miller… most of whom are referred to in the show.
The Last Laugh is as comfortable to watch as putting on your favourite slippers in front of the telly. In the Good Old Days of British comedy. What utter joy.
