Theatre Royal BrightonBob Golding, Simon Cartwright and Damian Williams, who have played the comedy giants before, summon them like spirits to the stage in this tribute.
It helps that Bob Golding, Simon Cartwright and Damian Williams have played their alter egos before, extensively, and summon them like spirits to the stage.
But it’s a sentiment contradicted by the show itself, which recycles lots of jokes we’ve heard before in its tribute to three 20th-century comedy giants, and makes us laugh plenty.
Cartwright’s Monkhouse, bordering on animatronic and caked in makeup that would make Donald Trump blush (not that we’d see it), is fascinated by Tommy and Eric’s “funny bones”.
‘You tell ’em a joke they’ve heard before, and: silence.” So says Eric Morecambe in The Last Laugh on audience resistance to secondhand comedy.
