The Last Laugh, Brighton Theatre Royal

Writer & Director: Paul Hendy

Three outstanding performances dazzle at the heart of this positive play about comedy legends.

Expect a night of nostalgic comedy and an exploration into what makes comedy men tick. In the Last Laugh, Tommy Cooper (Damian Williams), Bob Monkhouse (Simon Cartwright) and Eric Morecambe (Bob Golding) take to the stage for the performance of their lives. The jokes stack up thick and fast and there’s still time for more pensive moments to reflect on the comedy game.

Lee Newby’s set provides a fittingly shabby backstage dressing room for the three comedians to meet. The walls are stained and the furniture, very tired. The audience can play a game of Guess Who with the framed photographs, capturing comedy heavy weights, including the likes of Arthur Askey, Sid James, and Max Miller. As, Bob Monkhouse (Cartwright) reflects upon later in the play, there’s something that unites the photographed. They are all dead. He neglects to mention they are also all men and white. This play is very much a reflection of that era when the comedy stage was much more exclusive a space.

We open on a familiar looking man wearing an unflattering undervest, a fez, and oversized duck feet. The audience erupts. Damian Williams’ Tommy Cooper is brilliantly realised. Not only that, but Williams, himself, has exceptional timing and keeps enticing the audience into rolling laughter throughout the performance. Simon Cartwright as Bob Monkhouse joins Williams on stage, sporting a deep tan, pastel colours, and carrying two large books of his own carefully crafted jokes. He is followed by Bob Golding, in trade mark glasses, as Eric Morecambe. All three expertly recreate their retrospective comic to the delight of the audience. The balance of energies on stage and the direction as they move around the space is extremely well-handled.

From very early on we are led by lighting cues to suspect these funny men are lost to some kind of backstage purgatory. Don’t expect any big surprises here. If you are after a very entertaining, humorous night out at the theatre, then these exceptional performances create just that. Writer Paul Hendy admits that it was with the mind of bringing these three performers together that he created the vehicle to do so. The play itself is a highly enjoyable gallop through the world of creating comedy and comparisons between performers. However, due to the origins of its birth perhaps, it can be argued, to lack a fresh perspective.

We’ve all heard the one about the addicted, aging, out-of-shape comic who neglects his family life and health in the chase of bigger and bigger laughs. The tragic clown is its own sad punchline. Getting close to these funny folk is never going to be easy and the structure of this play, although highly entertaining, doesn’t allow for the moments of deep emotional truth for which we yearn. The characters are all egotistical performers caught in their own relationships to comedy and not fully able to bring out in each other how they relate to the world off stage. We catch welcome glimmers in Cooper (Williams) remembering when he was laughed at by a crowd while crying in public, Morecambe (Golding) admitting how he’s missed his kids growing up, and Monkhouse’s (Cartwright) revelations on his relationship with his former creative partner.

At its heart, this show is a tribute to three comedy legends and that it does very well. The Q&A pays further to the service of these funny men, with the actors sharing their personal favourite anecdotes about the comedians they play and what it has been like to dedicate so much of their own time to bringing back to life Cooper (Williams), Morecambe (Golding) and Monkhouse (Cartwright) respectively.

This is a nostalgic, highly entertaining and extremely humorous night out at the theatre. The play meets our expectations of exploring funny men’s obsession with comedy. During the show, Eric Morecombe (Golding) cites “Analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs and the frog dies.” With The Last Laugh we laugh a lot, and, as far as we can tell, no animals were harmed in the making of this show. However, perhaps its biggest takeaway, is how the laughter is never enough – we want more than the gag – and how, even if you really want to make it, everyone has to die sometimes.

Runs to 15th February 2025