Attention spans are fickle. 

Even at the very beginning of a performance, a production might find it tricky to immediately rapt the audience from whatever they were focused on before the lights dimmed. 

Which is one reason theater-makers place such importance on opening scenes, and even opening lines.

But The Last Laugh, now at 59E59, utilizes what’s commonly overlooked: the first image; starting with a striking stage tableau can quickly invest our brains in the proceedings. 

And what corporeal canvass initially befalls the audience’s eyeballs in The Last Laugh? A middle-aged fatty-boombatty (said with endearment; takes one to call one) clad in nada but a fez, a tank top, tighty-whities, and…oversized chicken-feet?! A surprising sight gag that (hopefully) gets the laughs going, and (hopefully) convinces your mind to ten-hut. 

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The audience’s return to a second act poses similar problems: how to reengage them after the temporary check out of concession purchases and idle #scrolling that is intermission?

To solve this Act Two conundrum for his Much Ado About Nothing in London, director Jamie Lloyd adopted the same approach as The Last Laugh; it picks back up again post-interval with an ensemble member wearing…a drinking helmet?!

In all my years of seeing Shakespeare — and most theater, for that matter — I never thought I’d encounter a freaking drinking helmet on stage. The shock of this unexpected juxtaposition from the Shakespearean norm serves as another means of regrouping ADD viewers.