... and this is my friend Mr Laurel

Jeffrey Holland (Spike form Hi Di Hi) has always been fascinated by Stan Laurel and now, finally, everything has fallen in to place for him to fulfil a long held dream to play his hero. Not only have he and Gail Louw come up with a beautiful script but Holland finally feels old enough to play one half of the greatest comedy double act in cinema history.
The stage is a bare black clad room with just a white painted chair and a wire frame bed suggesting the dying Oliver Hardy. This is a beautifully crafted stroll through the lives of two of the best loved comedians of the 20th century. Jeffrey Holland has somehow got both the face and the voice spot-on for his impersonation of the on-stage gormless but off-stage very astute Stanley Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson).
Told in the sometimes hesitant manor so beloved by audiences around the world, Stan Laurel has an imaginary conversation with the sleeping form of his partner. Recalling the highs and lows of both their career together and their personal lives, this affection stroll through their lives reveals not only the known highlights but also the private low points. Did anyone know that Stan lost his only son at a very tender age? Or that Ollie put up with an abusive alcoholic wife? Or that between them they kept several wedding chapels in business for years?
Interspersed in the conversation Stan remembers the old routines they used to do. Jeffrey Holland manages both voices and, surprisingly, both faces to recall fond memories of laughter from their heyday . Somehow the sadness of this being Ollie's death bed is lightened by that laughter and the knowledge that, thanks to film, that laughter will ring out for many decades to come.
'and this is my friend Mr Laurel' runs at Upstairs at The Western until Friday 21st Feb and is then at Kenton Theatre, Henley on Thames on March 29

First published in Western Gazette 
© Paul Towers 19/3/2014