‘Analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog,’ said the late, great comedian (and great friend of The Oldie) Barry Cryer, who would have been 90 on 23rd March. ‘Nobody laughs and the frog dies.’
This funny, poignant play refutes Cryer’s shrewd maxim. It’s full of laughs and its analysis of comedy is profound.
We’re backstage at a West End theatre, in a typically shabby dressing room – hat tip to designer Lee Newby for his meticulously realistic set. Tommy Cooper is in his vest and pants – not a pretty sight – preparing for tonight’s show and downing a few stiff whiskies while he’s at it.
He’s joined by Eric Morecambe and Bob Monkhouse, who’ll be sharing the bill with him this evening. There’s lots of showbiz banter – all very amusing, but nothing memorable. Then the three men start discussing comedy, and this show takes a darker and far more interesting turn.
‘Tears of a clown’ may be a cliché but, as with a lot of clichés, there’s some truth in it. A lot of the best comedy springs from a deep well of unhappiness, and quite a lot of comics live unhappy lives. Even if they don’t start off miserable, the lifestyle often makes them so – the endless touring, the lonely hotels, the constant estrangement from friends and family.
This applies to anyone in showbusiness, and for comedians it’s especially acute. Comedy is a zero-sum game. Either the punters laugh or they don’t, and if they don’t there’s nowhere to hide. Comics are the gladiators of showbiz, going naked into the arena. No wonder they talk about ‘killing’ when they triumph and ‘dying’ when they fail.
Why do they put themselves through it, night after night? Partly because they crave the laughter, but mainly because it’s a way out. For working-class blokes like Cooper or Morecambe, comedy was a great escape, like boxing, and like boxers they paid a heavy price.
Both men (literally) died onstage, Cooper at 63, Morecambe at just 58.
Monkhouse was different. A nice middle-class boy at Dulwich College, an accountant’s son from suburban Beckenham, he studied comedy like a science and approached it like a business.
His jokes were honed and crafted, but the public never fell in love with him. They found him oily and insincere.
This was terribly unfair. In fact, Monkhouse had more than his fair share of hardship. His first double-act partner killed himself (like quite a few comics). Two of his three children predeceased him. His elder son was severely disabled. His younger son died of an overdose.
Cooper and Morecambe were a lot less slick. Their humour was natural, instinctive. Unlike Monkhouse, they had funny bones. Unlike Monkhouse, they hardly ever wrote a decent gag.
They relied on scriptwriters, or hand-me-down one-liners – they even pinched a few from Monkhouse. And yet the public adored them.
As Paul Hendy’s perceptive script reveals, Cooper and Morecambe weren’t nearly as breezy as they made out.
Cooper was an alcoholic with a stormy private life. Morecambe was happily married, a family man with no vices, but he was nervous, anxious and highly strung. Cooper’s heart attacks were brought on by drink. Morecambe’s were brought on, it seemed to me, by the lifelong stress and strain of making strangers laugh.
Simon Cartwright, Bob Golding and Damian Williams are all excellent as the three comics. Golding’s Morecambe and Williams’s Cooper are uncannily accurate, Cartwright’s Monkhouse rather less so – but his was the performance I enjoyed the most. It’s the most complex character, and he brings something new to the role – a tenderness and vulnerability. Is this the real Monkhouse, the man we never saw on TV? I guess we’ll never know.
The only shortcoming is the absence of Ernie Wise. If Hendy had included him, it would have given his script more depth and bite. In The Last Laugh, Eric speaks warmly about Ernie but, as Hendy must surely know – he’s developing a movie about them – their relationship was extremely complex.
In the course of researching a book about Eric and Ernie, I found a letter from Eric to Ronnie Barker that was very scathing about his other half.
Yet it’s a rare play that leaves you wanting more, and Hendy’s script packs an awful lot into 80 compact minutes.
What a shame Barry Cryer didn’t live to see it. It would have made him laugh a lot.
William Cook wrote Morecambe and Wise Untold (HarperCollins)
