The Last Laugh
- Robert Beale
- Jul 30
- 2 min read
Paul Hendy
Evolution Productions with Jamie Wilson Productions
Opera House, Manchester and touring
July 29-Aug 2, 2025: 1 hr 35 mins
(also in Bradford, Liverpool and Blackpool. Full venues and dates here)
Three funny men walk into a down-at-heel theatre dressing room ... and that’s the surreal setting for The Last Laugh.
Based on a short film made in 2016 by Paul Hendy (which won Best Film at the Manchester Film Festival), the stage version was a smash hit at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, and this production was created for the West End, New York and now a UK tour.
It’s now one-act length with no interval, though the audience is invited to stick around for a Q&A afterwards.
Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe and Bob Monkhouse are together, swapping memories, sharing gags and occasionally sympathising about the pressures of having to go out on stage and be funny. It’s hilarious, inspiring and nostalgic, all in one.
They start off talking about the great variety-era comedians of the past, though for even older members of the audience some are little more than names and catchphrases now. But this show has a varied age-group audience, because at least two of the three are known, from repeated TV clips, to a whole new generation.
It’s got performers with form, too: Damian Williams was Tommy Cooper in the play Being Tommy Cooper, Bob Golding was Eric Morecambe in Tommy Cooper Not Like That, Like This on TV, and Simon Cartwright did a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015 as The Man called Monkhouse.
The surprise in one way is that Bob Monkhouse is in it at all – even at the height of his career he was known more as a game show host than a comic. But in the business his writing (a famous joke book) and ability to ad-lib were legendary, and in this show he brings a more serious kind of ballast, with references to his family tragedies as well as his skills with words.
Each of the three has their character off to near-perfection: Tommy Cooper’s perfect timing, facial expressions and ability to hold an audience, seemingly doing nothing at all – I began to wonder whether he was actually funnier than the real Tommy; Eric Morecambe’s walks, gestures and semi-slapstick – of course there’s no Ernie Wise, but the show gets round that by having his name dropped so often he’s almost there anyway; Bob Monkhouse’s philosophising and laid-back delivery – and in his case, the voice is uncannily real.
It's directed by Paul Hendy, with a small but beautifully-detailed set by Lee Newby, and there’s a smattering of songs (music and soundscape design by Ethan Lewis Maltby) to lighten the mood now and then.
Of course you might wonder whether comics are always just the same off-stage as on. That’s the point of it, really: what if they were? It might not be true, but we’d all love to believe it was. Just like that.
More info and tickets here
