The Tale Of The Lonesome Stan

Gerry Cannon TUES29OCT24

opping a Gold TV poll in 2019 as The Greatest British Comedian of All Time, Arthur Stanley Jefferson is also remembered as one of the sweetest icons of Hollywood’s black and white era.

Having become one of cinema’s biggest stars as part of a duo with Oliver Hardy, the artist better known as Stan Laurel spent eight years after his comedy partner’s death in 1957 distracting himself from the heartache by welcoming fans young and old, famous and unknown, into his tiny Santa Monica flat.

It’s these lonesome years before the comedy legend’s own death on February 23rd, 1965 that local painter, playwright, sculptor, Beat poet and ballet dancer David O’Reilly has chosen to explore in Stan, coming to The Whale on Thursday, November 14th to Saturday 16th.

It was during a casual conversation O’Reilly had with local actor Gerry Cannon that the idea of exploring Laurel’s last eight years first took hold, and the evolution of the play itself is something we charted in a ramble chat with its shy and retiring creator back in September.

This afternoon, it was the turn of the play’s leading man to try and follow our stream of semi-consciousness as we dug deeper into resurrecting, reanimating and respecting this pioneer of screen comedy…

You can check out Stan at The Whale from Thursday, November 14th to Saturday 16th here, and jump back to our September interview with its writer right here.