REVIEW: PUNCHING JUDY, SkinnedTeeth Theatre Company at The Hope Theatre 3 & 4 May 2026
‘There is a lot of precision and skill on display, and it is fun to watch, but …’ ★★★
When a Punch and Judy Professor set up his stripy booth at the seaside, what impresses is not two glove puppets knocking seven bells out of each other, and it isn’t the ‘death’ of one of the puppets because the hand has been removed and its little cloth body has been draped over the booth’s ledge. On the pocket handkerchief sized stage of the Hope Theatre, with glove puppets represented by full sized people, different standards apply.
Mike Swain and Bethany Irving have devised a show, Punching Judy, that devotes serious attention to what the traditional Punch and Judy show actually portrays, and they conclude, not unreasonably, that it mostly trades in domestic abuse.
By alternating passages of fantastic physical theatre, where the devisers represent the puppet figures, with episodes where they portray a ‘real’ family, Punch and his wife and child in a domestic setting, Punch’s psychosis represented without the slapstick humour, they illustrate a very dark core of the traditional children’s entertainment.
The physical prowess on show is admirable, they make slapstick battles wild and exciting and dangerous-looking, while never actually crashing into the audience or breaking the set. There is a lot of precision and skill on display, and it is fun to watch. Plaudits to both performers and to the fight choreographer Jack Stockdale-Haley.
As a visual spectacle, this show works well. I am less convinced by the underlying principle, that the dark soul of the Punch and Judy show needs to be unmasked. The puppet show has always seemed pretty bleak to me.
Killing crocodiles and policemen, and fooling the hangman into hanging himself, those acts of brutality are somehow easy to forgive, but when Punch beats his baby to death and murders his wife the show has always moved into much less acceptable representations, particularly for contemporary sensibilities. When Samuel Pepys first mentioned the show in the 1660’s, hangings and dog-fights were popular, and thankfully we have moved on a bit.
There was a time when the Three Stooges sticking their fingers in each others eyes was comedy gold, but slapstick conventions no longer find that sort of abuse funny. A similar moral disquiet has made the traditional puppet show less brutal. Anarchism is entertainment, we feel, and domestic abuse isn’t.
The show puts a lot of energy into making a case that no longer needs making, and thereby overshadows the skilled humpsti bumpsti clowning. The dark side of the buffoonery speaks for itself, having the ‘reality’ of the violence sign-posted makes for a too-bleak experience. And it really isn’t necessary. Punch was always a brutal character, even when confined by a puppeteer’s right hand and a swazzle.
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