Hankies at the ready

This show destroyed me

David Shields and the cast of Punch at the Young Vic. Photo: Marc Brenner

When was the last time you cried at the theatre?

What I’ve seen

Punch, at the Young Vic until April 26, is one of the most affecting things I’ve seen on stage in a long time. James Graham’s (Quiz, Best of Enemies, Sherwood) latest play is based on Right from Wrong, the memoir of Jacob Dunne who, as a wayward teenager one boozy night in Nottingham, unintentionally killed a blameless young man, James Hodgkinson, with one punch to the head.

At first, he thinks he’s unlucky to get a 30-month sentence in a youth offenders’ institution - he didn’t mean it, it was just a scrap, if his mate hadn’t ratted him out he’d be OK - and prison (he serves half his sentence) does nothing to improve his self-pity.

But when a request comes through his parole officer Wendy from James’ family to make contact, as part of a process of restorative justice, things begin to change for and within Jacob.

Transferring from the Nottingham Playhouse where it premiered, Punch is a totally engrossing and completely heartbreaking story of disaster and redemption - of bad decisions, bad services, bad education and bad architecture, relieved by genuine goodness, open-heartedness in the face of utter despair, and care.

David Shields, playing Dunne - a dyslexic, working class lad hovering somewhere on the spectrum with no real educational support - is explosively charismatic as, in a flawless Nottingham accent, he winningly describes the pissed-up summer’s day - and the years - leading up to that moment.

You see how his community, on the Meadows council estate, becomes hardened and fractured in its poorly maintained concrete jungle, prone to skirmishes as turf wars erupt among rival drug gangs made up of teenagers brimming with testosterone.

You root for him - his adoration of his struggling mother gives an inkling of his better instincts - even as he does the stupidest thing imaginable, because Graham so clearly lays out (without preaching) why he’s doing it, and how nebulous and stratospherically unlikely any alternative seems to be.