Radio Times: Review by:; John Mount

Young Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who will go on to become half of Laurel and Hardy, is desperate to perform on the Glasgow stage. Colin Hough’s breezy play about the early life of Stan Laurel highlights the debt Hollywood owes the stars and conventions of the music hall.

It follows Arthur, backed by his mother Madge, a former actress with a delicate constitution, as he tries to win over his father, who’d prefer him to help him run the Metropole Theatre and entertain the stony-faced audience of Pickard’s Museum.

But the decision to hire a nurse for his mother brings Eunice, a grievous angel and a liberal dispenser of malice and sedatives who threatens to scupper his plans entirely. And the title? The gifts Stan takes Hardy in the movie County Hospital.

About this programme

By Colin Hough. In 1906, Stanley Jefferson dreams of life on the stage, but his father knows the perils of being an actor and tries to dissuade him from following in his footsteps. However, his mother is more encouraging, and when he lands a spot at a theatre, his career as comedy performer Stan Laurel is born. Starring James Anthony Pearson and Alexandra Mathie.