“The Last Laugh” at Noël Coward Theatre
Franco Milazzo in the West End
28 February 2025
Paul Hendy’s The Last Laugh takes three iconic British comedians from the second half of the last century – Tommy Cooper, Bob Monkhouse, and Eric Morecambe – and imagines them sharing a dressing room together before they go on to perform for an audience.
Bob Golding, Damian Williams, Simon Cartwright.
Photo credit: Pamela Raith.
Tommy Cooper (Damian Williams) is the first one we meet. Sitting alone in just his white vest and underpants, he practises his opening line in the mirror. “Have we got a show for you!” he cries out loud. The smile falls. The eyes drift downwards. The shoulders drop. A pause. Then, almost sotto voce: “Have we got a show for you?” In two lines, writer and director Hendy encapsulates the bullish outer bravado and hidden inner fears inherent in the fez-wearing Welshman’s personality.
Cooper’s improvisational style was the opposite to that of the next man through the door, Bob Monkhouse (Simon Cartwright). With his measured tone of voice and precious book of collected jokes under his arm, he saunters in with a casually lecherous gag. The pair banter amiably with Monkhouse taking all the verbal slings and arrows the magician-cum-comic throws at him while attempting to educate the larger man on the craft of creating one-liners.
After a while, it is the turn of Eric Morecambe (Bob Golding) – minus Ernie Wise this time – to bound in. Expertly throwing his hat onto a coat hook (in Lee Newby’s seedy dressing room), he wonders just what he has drifted into as he mediates between the other two when not bursting into song.
The Last Laugh is an extended version of the award-winning 2016 short film of the same name written and directed by Hendy. It has already had an acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe, followed by a tour, and is now making its London debut. Hendy has kept faith throughout with the same cast – all of whom had already played their characters previously – and it is easy to see why.
Damian Williams as Tommy Cooper.
Photo credit: Pamela Raith.
Cartwright pairs his calm and deferential portrayal of the perma-tanned Monkhouse with the sort of surgical one-liners (“I can still enjoy sex at 58. I live at 56, so it’s no distance.”) that Henny Youngman would have applauded. Golding’s Morecambe is the most rounded portrayal of the three and – even if he can’t quite capture the timbre of his subject’s voice – manages to animate the family-friendly vaudevillian antics with real vigour. Williams looks the least like his character but that takes nothing away from the vibrant brashness he brings to Cooper, a man who has zero patience for Monkhouse’s clinical approach and instead prefers absurdist verbal humour (“Two fish in a tank. One says to the other: ‘You drive, I’ll man the guns.’”) powered by deliberately daft wooden props like a card-picking duck.
The Last Laugh could be seen as a mercenary exercise in British nostalgia appealing to the kind of people who still remember there being only three TV channels (or maybe even two); there’s certainly some indulgent moments within the 80-minute running time with a fair few fan-service gags left in purely for those in the know. It’s an accusation that would be true if not for the play’s darker moments where Hendy explores just why, night after night, from one town to another, these men put themselves out on stage or in front of a camera. It’s not for the money, at least in the latter stages of their career, but – as Monkhouse suggests – they have reached a state where they just can’t not do what they do. And indeed Cooper and Morecambe both died on stage.
As well as the heavy impact of their careers on their family life, mental health issues are touched upon: Morecambe describes being physically restless at school and would these days have likely been diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder; Cooper has a wife at home, a mistress on the road, and is never without a filled whisky glass in one huge hand; and Monkhouse confesses to having an OCD-like need to continuously chisel away at his jokes. Towards the end, it turns into some sort of group therapy session: the three comics recognize the luck which brought them to where they are now and appreciate their different talents while accepting that they are addicted to being in front of an audience (and preferably one that is laughing along).
It’s rare to see a cast that are so much ease not only with their own roles but with each other. Although the set-up is pure fiction, there’s more than a veneer of plausibility to what we see. The finale tugs at the heartstrings by giving the trio a sentimental send-off which shamelessly jerks the tears out. More exposition wouldn’t hurt to broaden The Last Laugh’s appeal well beyond the over-50s, but ultimately Hendy is playing all the right notes in roughly the right order.
