The Last Laugh at the Noel Coward Theatre review: gags, gurning, and a supremely lazy script

Bob Golding (Eric Morecambe), Damian Williams (Tommy Cooper) and Simon Cartwright (Bob Monkhouse) - (Pamela Raith)

A Welshman, a Lancastrian and a bloke from Beckenham walk into a theatre dressing room in Paul Hendy’s ropey nostalgia-fest about three British comedy greats. The Last Laugh features impressive impersonations of Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe and Bob Monkhouse and generates easy chuckles from their old gags, gurning and bits of physical business.

But the script is one of the laziest I’ve come across in a long time, with the three men merely insulting and encouraging each other to do old routines by turns. There’s a flatulent attempt to explain what makes the likes of Cooper and Morecambe funny in their bones and Monkhouse a try-hard, and some obligatory sad-clown stuff. Hendy also directs, sluggishly.