Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Kier McAllister, Larah Bross.

Comedy can be personal, it has to be to be turned from the anecdotal moan down to the pub in front of a few well wishers and friends to the point of no return where you are stood a few feet away from people that you are about to open up about a significant portion of your life to. Comedy must be personal when it means you are going to exorcise a demon on a roasting furnace and get The Last Laugh.

Inside the warmth and grandeur of The Assembly Rooms, the space of Studio 2 offers a kind of retreat, a place in which the assembled can watch Scottish comedian Kier McAllister rummage through a recent event in his life and show the destruction that a usurper and a heckler can bring to the stage and to the point of existence when you don’t know their motives.

The Last Laugh is a two hander performed with great dexterous and delicious skill by Kier McAllister and Larah Bross but with the added extra pleasure of knowing that reflective karma is about to tag along for the hour and offer an insight into just how to handle, in the end, the prospect of getting the Last Laugh, the joy in making someone else’s actions seem in the end petty and inglorious.

There is a quiet reassurance and steely dramatic gaze when watching Kier McAlister deliver the eulogy and last rites to those who wish you ill to the point where they are willing to destroy you to further their own career, their own life or just to have one over you and make you feel small, inconsequential and down. It takes great mastery of will and a great comedy brain in which to willingly take yourself down this road and with the assistance of Canadian comedian Larah Bross, that road in studio 2 was well worth every sign post, diversion and wonderful creative leap offered to the appreciative audience.

Coming back from such a knock to the psyche that is talked about throughout the hour is to be admired and congratulated and the overall pleasure of seeing Mr. McAllister is worth its weight in comedy gold.

This is top draw material from Kier McAllister and Larah Bross, they and the audience certainly had the last and most enjoyable laugh.

Ian D. Hall