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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

Punch review – James Graham’s tragic study of a fatal blow

David Shields (centre) in Punch at Nottingham Playhouse.
Propulsive, poetic … David Shields (centre) in Punch. Photograph: Marc Brenner

Take note: this is not a play about the eponymous magazine specialising in scathing political satire, although such fare might more readily be expected from playwright James Graham. This is about the ripple effects of a single punch, thrown by a teenager on a night out, with fatal consequences.

Fabulously directed by Adam Penford, it is based on a memoir by Jacob Dunne who killed 28-year-old trainee paramedic James Hodgkinson in this way. Its Nottingham staging is relevant: it is where Graham and Jacob (played by David Shields) grew up, the latter on a council estate that slowly sucks him into gang culture.

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