The musical variety and style he brought to the performance, coupled with first-rate playing from Academia Montis Regalis, held longueurs to a minimum.
With its first-rate playing and narrative arc -- it began with a duet, expanded to a quintet and ended with a saxophone solo -- it has sold nearly 90,000 copies, reports Soundscan, a company that tracks album sales.
Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson are also first-rate playing, respectively, Laurel's fourth wife, ex-Hollywood dancer Ida, and Hardy's third spouse, Lucille, a former studio script girl.
First-rate plays, however, always have an element of give.
Much of it was evanescent agitprop, but out of the turmoil emerged some first-rate plays.
But, as in all first-rate plays, you see both points of view.
Delia Bacon (no relation) was a 19th-century Baconian who called Shakespeare a "stupid, illiterate, third-rate play actor".
She refused to accept that a "stupid, illiterate, third-rate play-actor" could have written works of such "superhuman genius".
But if you were expecting a seamless, emotionally stirring marriage between a first-rate actor and a first-rate play, then "Butley" disappoints.
He was little better than a "pet horse-boy at Blackfriars", "an old showman and hawker of plays", an out-and-out "stupid, illiterate, third-rate play actor".
Despite the production's eccentricities, it remains a first-rate play about both the mystery of creativity and the silken strings of patronage.
