Latest news with #TheLastLaugh
Glasgow Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
The Last Laugh play about comedy legends coming to Glasgow
The Last Laugh, written and directed by Paul Hendy, will be performed at the Theatre Royal from July 15 to 19. This follows a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The play re-imagines the lives of comedy legends Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe, and Bob Monkhouse. It is filled with jokes and stories, and is said to be "nostalgic" and "poignant". The lead actors will be reprising their roles from the Edinburgh run. Bob Golding will play Eric Morecambe, a role he previously played in the West End hit Morecambe at the Duchess Theatre. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for his performance. Damian Williams will take on the role of Tommy Cooper, having previously played the comedian in the tour of Being Tommy Cooper. Simon Cartwright has been an actor and impressionist since the 1980s and has appeared on the award-winning Channel 4 show Toast of London. Jamie Wilson, the producer, said: "The team here at JWP were bowled over by the relevance of their timeless comedy and after seeing it myself in Edinburgh, I just knew it had to have a further life so many more people could experience it. "What is so brilliant about this play is the audiences who love and remember Eric, Tommy and Bob will be able to relive their comedy greatness and those that don't, will be introduced to the genius of these national treasures. "I'm so pleased these icons will be back on the London stage for audiences to enjoy." The Last Laugh's set design is by Lee Newby, music and soundscape design by Ethan Lewis Maltby, sound design by Callum Wills, costume design by Amy Chamberlain and casting by Kate Roddy.
Boston Globe
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Five things to do around Boston, March 31-April 13
April 4-13 Pride on Screen See the very best of this year's LGBTQ film at the Wicked Queer film festival. One of the world's longest-running events of its kind, Wicked Queer is back for its 41st year. See feature-length movies, documentaries, and short films that celebrate queer storytelling and filmmaking, at venues throughout Greater Boston. Prices vary. April 5 The Last Laugh Watch Boston's best up-and-coming comedians face off for a $7,000 prize at the Boston Comedy Festival Contest Finals. These eight competitors have been winnowed down from a field of 72 comics. In this final round, at 8 p.m. at Somerville Theatre, watch them perform their funniest routines for a chance to win over the crowd. $36.95. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up April 5 Advertisement Hard-Core Parkour With the Boston Women's Parkour Workshop, the Dojo at Somernova invites anyone who is female-identifying or nonbinary and at least 14 years old to sample the sport at 10 a.m. on its Somerville course. Staff will be there to teach newcomers the basics, while more seasoned athletes can jump right in. Half-day session starts at $40, free for Cambridge and Somerville high schoolers. April 11 Strung Along Listen to one of the world's most unique ensembles at this performance from the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. Making its first visit to Boston since 2018, the orchestra will perform an evening of innovative, genre-defying music starting at 8 p.m. at the New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall. $62. Editor's note: This edition of Your Week Ahead covers two weeks. Look for the next Globe Magazine on April 13. Share your event news. Send information on Boston-area happenings at least three weeks in advance to week@ Adelaide Parker can be reached at
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Shocked ‘Surrounded' Star Sam Seder Most About His MAGA Opponents
The Majority Report host Sam Seder has been a political commentator for more than two decades. But nothing he has done in his long career has brought him quite as much attention as a new video in which he was forced to debate 20 hardcore Donald Trump supporters one by one as part of Jubilee Media's increasingly popular 'Surrounded' series. In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Seder breaks down the surreal experience of systematically schooling the shockingly young and diverse MAGA adherents on everything from Social Security to DEI to the prospect of a full-on American theocracy. He also has some choice words for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has taken a very different approach to engaging with the other side. Later, Seder talks about getting his start in political media at Air America, the current state of MSNBC, his long-running voice role on Bob's Burgers and the unexpected benefits of appearing on Sex and the City 25 years ago. It was just after Trump won the 2024 election that Jubilee reached out to Seder about being at the center of one of their 'surrounded' videos. He was only 'vaguely aware' of the series and wasn't sure he wanted to do it at first, but when he mentioned the idea to his 19-year-old daughter, she told him, 'You've got to do that.' Seder, 58, started to see the opportunity as a way to reach young people like his daughter with his progressive message about the vital importance of the government safety net. But he didn't realize until he walked into the giant warehouse in Los Angeles where they shoot the series that he would be making his argument directly to Trump voters who are less than half his age. 'I literally didn't know what I was walking into,' Seder says of the surreal experience, which took place just five days into the new Trump administration as L.A. was still on fire. He flew in from his home in New York for less than 24 hours and then mostly forgot about the whole thing until the 90-minute video dropped in mid-March and briefly took over social media. Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing by following The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday. I don't know how much preparation you did ahead of time, but even just when you walked into that room, how were you thinking about how you wanted to approach the situation? Well, they allow you to choose the prompts, the contentions. So I had a notion of the broad strokes of things that we were going to be talking about. I've been doing this now for 20 years. I started in AM talk radio. So a lot of this stuff is stuff that I know. And I always go into these things somewhat prepared, but there's only so much you can prepare. And certainly there were responses that I got from them that I was simply not prepared to address. I was prepared for there to be more people there who were going to be able to engage on the substance of what I was talking about, and there was not a lot of that. Was there a person or argument or moment that surprised you the most? There were two. One of my contentions was, unless you're a billionaire, a religious fundamentalist, or a xenophobic nationalist, you made a mistake in voting for Donald Trump. And it did not occur to me that instead of someone saying, 'Hey, I'm not a billionaire, and I'm not a theocrat, and I'm not a white nationalist, but I care about X, Y or Z, like, I'm worried about inflation'—no one came and said that, instead, what happened was, someone came down and said, 'I am a Christian theocrat, and this is why Christian theocracy is better, because I have a moral foundation for my beliefs.' And it took me longer than I would have wanted to pivot to like, 'Well, let's hear your vision of America, after you get what you want.' And it was 'women subjugated by men,' I'm not paraphrasing. That was the part that was shocking to me. Women subjugated by men, no marriage equality, no marriage for fun, essentially no birth control. It turns out this guy, his avatar on Twitter is 'Women shouldn't vote.' It never occurred to me that someone's going to come and promote that in such a full-throated way. And then there was a woman who followed him who came and said, 'What's wrong with xenophobic nationalism?' Yeah, that was quite a moment. And I was like, oh, OK… I mean, it's healthy, I think, to have your assumptions questioned that way. I think one of the strengths of the country has been immigrants changing America and America changing immigrants. American identity has been evolving since day one. I think that's the strength of America. But I wasn't coming in feeling like, oh, I need to justify this. And I did need to. Why do you think this format resonates with people so much? I think it works because, one, it looks like the Roman Colosseum. It has that dynamic. It's dramatic in that way, and also you don't get bored because there are 20 different people who could jump in at any time. You don't know what you're going to get each time. And so I imagine that's why people find it entertaining and compelling. And I think in this particular instance, people were really just sort of surprised how assured these people were. And how, in many of those instances, completely and quite obviously totally wrong. That's an interesting combo. It's interesting that this video came out right around the same time as Gavin Newsom's podcast, where he is interviewing the biggest names in MAGA, Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, in what seems like a very different way than what you were doing here. Do you feel like there is a right and wrong way to engage people who have these views? From my perspective there is. And his is the wrong way. I think it's perfectly fine to go and have a conversation with people, and I think it's perfectly fine to share a platform and whatnot. But if I have a conversation with those people, there will be absolutely zero misunderstanding or ambiguity as to where I stand in relationship to them. And the only purpose for that engagement is to point out the flaws in their ideology. If you're doing a podcast with Steve Bannon so that you can have a beer with the guy afterwards, first of all, you're either lying or you're deluded. Because they are paid to create that division, they are paid to get an advantage that is going to help within their political project. And their political project ostensibly, is supposed to be much different than Gavin Newsom's. And so, I'm not going to be friendly in that environment. I will be polite, but in no way does politeness require you to be chummy. And I think that's really unhealthy, because it understates the stakes that are going on in this situation. I mean, Charlie Kirk has said stuff on his program that, if he was on the left, Gavin Newsom would never sit with him because of how antisemitic it is. The idea that Jews have been historically sort of anti-white and that type of stuff—Gavin Newsom wouldn't be caught dead with anybody [on the left who said that]. But the amount of benefit of doubt is gross. What do you think he's up to? Why do you think he's doing it? I think as a political project for Newsom, he's from California. He is perceived as being a flaming liberal, and this is how he repositions himself. In the context of casting, if you play Doogie Howser for five years, and you're done with that show, the next part you take should be more sinister to show that you can play against type. That's what he's doing, and it's for his own political fortunes. But it is at the expense of, I think, our politics broadly. Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bill Maher Reveals Plans to Meet With Trump at White House
Bill Maher is revealing his new plans to visit Donald Trump at the White House, with Kid Rock as the go-between. And he knows the move is going to further infuriate his liberal critics. In an upcoming episode of Maher's Club Random out Sunday, Maher opines, 'There will be lots of people on the left who will be like, how dare you talk to this man?' The late-night host made the reveal to his guest, fellow comedian and podcaster Andrew Schulz, who hosted Trump on his show just weeks before the election. Maher told Schulz he won't pass up meeting Trump, because that would be the 'mean girl' behavior he associates with the left. 'I was like, yeah, f--- you' to his leftie friends, he told Schulz. 'I'm not playing this game that you mean girls play, where they're like 'Oh, you know what? You can't sit at my lunch table because I'm just not talking to you.'' 'Not talking to you? You lost the election. Who the f--- do you think you have to talk to? It's one thing if you win it, it's another thing if you lose it,' he continued, right after explaining how his new friend Kid Rock led him to the idea. 'I mean, Kid Rock was here a couple of weeks ago, and he said, 'I want you to meet Trump.' He said, 'I'm going to take you to the White House.' So now we're going,' Maher said as Schulz praised him for shunning 'wokeness' throughout their talk. The pair also bonded over their similar views on Elon Musk. 'I don't think that Musk is trying to get richer,' Schulz said, to which Maher agreed, 'No, I've always defended him on that. He does not care about money.' That said, Maher added of DOGE, 'Nobody put any sort of breaks on this and to do it this way, and to take such glee in the cruelty of it—the people who got letters that said, 'Do something valuable with your life,' something he categorized an undeniably 'horrible.' Musk is simply doing what he thinks is best for the country but going about it in some of the wrong ways, the comedians agreed, adding that his autism diagnosis could be to blame for his behavior. In preparation for his White House visit, Maher shared that he has thinking about how he'll behave—and what he'll wear. 'That's my model for meeting Trump, it's like, be respectful, which he deserves. He won, not once but twice,' he said. 'It's funny my girl said to me, 'What are you gonna wear?' I said, 'I'm not gonna dress like Zelensky,' he said, adding that dressing formally is a 'sign of respect.' 'I'm wearing a suit and tie,' Maher confirmed. For more, listen to Andrew Schulz talk comedy, politics and Trump on The Last Laugh podcast.
Telegraph
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Last Laugh: impeccable impressions make for a nostalgic evening
Ticket prices reach faintly laughable levels – £97 – for writer-director Paul Hendy's homage to three British comedy greats – well, Tommy Cooper and Eric Morecambe, plus Bob Monkhouse – as seen in Edinburgh last year for a snip. The show is only 80 minutes. Running costs etc aside, there's a whiff of greed not need here. Not that this is likely to put the curious off. Set in a back-stage dressing-room, the rundown ambience and flickering mirror-lights of which seem as much a metaphor for an ailing nation as a signifier of old-school variety at its last gasp, The Last Laugh arrives at a moment when we're all in dire need of cheering up. And those of a particular age will hanker, with rightful nostalgia, for a happier yesteryear when British comedy and light entertainment were in their pomp. The success of Fawlty Towers in the West End affirms that there's no business like simulated Seventies showbusiness – we'll pounce on a replica of the real thing. And, no question, there's something uncanny about these dead-ringers as they chew the fat in the run-up to a curtain-up that grows ever more ominous. All three of the actors involved – Damian Williams, Bob Golding and Simon Cartwright – have honed their impressions in solo shows about their subjects. Williams, who toured as Cooper, has the glorious measure of the maladroit funny-man, and elicits laughs from the moment he appears, disconcerted and dumbfounded, in vest, pants and trademark fez, wading about in webbed yellow booties. Williams has the right pot-bellied, lantern-jawed, lumbering physicality – but the devil's in the detail: the procrastination, dead stares, and gruff carry-on. Not only do you forget you're watching an impersonation, he catches the miraculous way that Cooper could seemingly make anything amusing, pranking about with a duff card-trick involving a mechanical duck, and, just like that, turning an unprepossessing little white gate into the stuff of comedy gold. Cartwright's tanned and smarmy Monkhouse is presented as his antithesis, though too genial and gentlemanly to be his rival: the epitome of self-control, a devotee of craft – chiselling each joke to within an inch of its life and needling about who wrote what. He's game enough to be the butt of barbs about his lesser status, but his dedication impresses as he talks shop and, as with the other two, affirms a life devoted, punishingly, to the spotlight, hinting at the sadness behind the smile. The script doesn't dig deep, but still cuts below the surface, broaching what lasts, and what doesn't, and the way we must all take our final bow. Golding's contribution perhaps risks the greatest disappointment, given how adored Morecambe was, but even if he trades on a roster of familiar mannerisms – the raised eyebrows and forced chuckles, that pipe-puffing insouciance – he beautifully catches the essence of the star. And when he takes to a chair to strum and sing With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock, we ascend to a cloud nine where being innocuously daft is all. If we're left wanting more, maybe that's the point.
