A Poignant Real-Life Story Brought to the Stage: Reviewing 'Punch' at the Young Vic

★★★★★ | On a Saturday evening in Nottingham, teenager Jacob Dunne throws a careless and impulsive punch, killing the young James Hodgkinson. After serving time in prison, Jacob feels a lack of purpose and direction. It is not until James’s parents reach out to him that both sides obtain answers to their many questions about each other. 

Watching Punch was an experience of its own: in the two and a half hours that I was at the Young Vic, I cried, I received a warm hug from the stranger sitting next to me, I handed out tissues around me, I laughed wholeheartedly, and I was utterly immersed in the characters’ world. I am an emotional person, and with these theatrical shows, I always try to think about whether I enjoyed the piece because the subject matter is inherently touching or because it is genuinely good. In this case, it is without a doubt the latter. 

The company of Punch. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

Punch, written by James Graham and directed by Adam Penford, is exquisitely written, staged, and acted. The play is adapted from Jacob Dunne’s own autobiography, Right from Wrong, and does an excellent job of introducing and explaining restorative justice to the audience. The different characters reflecting on their apprehension towards it allows the audience to reflect on this complex issue. Having Joan and David – the victim’s parents – share their opposing views on wanting to reach out to their son’s killer is very effective in helping the audience understand the stakes of the meeting. Despite how I generally feel about adaptations, I thought this show was very impactful: the stage gives the story a larger platform and can raise further awareness about deaths by a single punch and the process of seeking restorative justice in their aftermath. 

Technically, the play is very well written and a great watch on its own. Graham does a good job adapting the autobiography into a play: the pacing is good, the placement of the intermission when the main character goes to prison is well thought through, and the use of a small cast is clever to preserve the personal nature of the story. 

David Shields, who plays Jacob, is fantastic. He manages to play both the 19-year-old version of his character and the more mature version in the same scene, without the audience feeling a huge disconnect between the two, nor the two being too similar. He communicates the confusion that his character faces exceptionally well. 

The company of Punch. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

Another standout actor is Emma Pallant, who plays Jacob’s mother among other characters. Playing multiple secondary characters within a play can be difficult. Still, Pallant managed to make them all distinct, performing many quick costume changes, eliciting gasps of admiration from the audience as she disappeared behind a wall and reappeared as a completely different person. 

What I enjoyed most about this show was how well the playwright and the actors handled humour within a macabre and serious topic. Had someone told me beforehand that the play about a family building a relationship with their son’s killer would be funny, I would have been extremely worried, mostly that the humour would disrespect the victim or would lighten the topic and distract from its seriousness. On the contrary, the humour helped ease the sometimes overwhelming tension. The audience was so immersed in the story — a sign of the excellent acting and directing — that the humour never felt disrespectful. 

Overall, this is a wonderful play, and I really have nothing bad to say about it. This show shares an important story and is a must-watch… but with a pack of tissues (or two) in hand.

★★★★★

Punch plays at the Young Vic until 26 April. It originally premiered at the Nottingham Playhouse, which commissioned and produced this play.