Theatre review: Punch

James Graham's widest audience has arguably come from Sherwood, the TV crime drama not only located in the Nottinghamshire area where he grew up, but also with a story built entirely on the very specific historic tensions that have a ripple effect there to this day. He stays in Nottingham for his latest return to the stage with a production that originated there, and a play based on a true story: Jacob Dunne (David Shields) was 19 when he joined some of his friends in a drunken fight, and punched a stranger, James Hodgkinson, who fell to the street and hit his head. Jacob ran away from the scene and more or less forgot about the assault, but nine days later James died of his injuries and Jacob was suddenly facing a murder charge. Punch follows his life leading up to that point, as well as the surprising turns it took after he served a 30-month prison sentence for manslaughter.

The first act takes us from a bright and promising child to a combination of his father leaving the family, diagnoses of ADHD, Dyslexia and autism, and a generally dead-end area contributing to life as a low-level teenage drug dealer who's failing at school.

In between these scenes of Jacob's early life we also flash ahead to the day of the fight and the weeks after, but from the perspective of James' parents David (Tony Hirst) and Joan (Julie Hesmondhalgh.) So we go from the former, who was on the scene and caught up in the fight, calling the latter to say there's been an accident, to the pair having to turn their son's life support off a couple of weeks later. The two sides of the story sync up by the time Jacob's in court receiving his sentence and the parents are devastated by how lenient 30 months seems, and are left without the closure they hoped they'd find.

It's a dark story without many moments of levity, although when the occasional joke does come along to lighten the tone it's usually a laugh-out-loud one, like Jacob's existential response to a body cavity search. Anna Fleischle's set design is dominated by a small metal bridge over the River Trent, which straddles the stage and allows Adam Penford's production to be very physical (with movement by Leanne Pinder with Lynne Page, and fights by Kev McCurdy,) the cast running around the stage and, with the exception of Shields, all quick-changing between multiple supporting roles. But all this energy is building up to the most moving scenes being set in a very still, central circle as what Punch is building up to is a meeting between killer and victims.

Graham doesn't spend a lot of time on Jacob's stay in a young offenders' institution, although it's made clear what the story thinks of putting hundreds of aggressive young men together in the hope they'll get any less violent - by the time Jacob's released he's been riled up by the others into wanting to find and kill Raf (Alec Boaden,) the friend who testified against him. Instead he starts to receive letters from Joan and David, who've been working with Restorative Justice caseworker Nicola (Shalisha James-Davis.) Even his probation officer Wendy (Emma Pallant) is sceptical, but over the next couple of years they work towards understanding each other, building up to meeting in person.

The ensuing climactic scene is hugely rewarding, made more so by the way it doesn't resort to the usual tropes: In fact Graham even hangs a lantern on this, with Nicola telling us this isn't the restorative justice scene we'd see in a film, with everyone being thrown together for an explosive confrontation. Instead it's a couple of years in the making, with everyone choosing their words carefully, even backtracking and apologising if they think they've used a term that's too inflammatory, and it's to Shields, Hesmondhalgh and Barnesy's credit that they get so much genuine emotion out of it - Phill was dabbing at his eyes next to me for the last 20 minutes and was straight on his feet at the curtain call.

Graham has a way of focusing our attention on details that others might have missed, sometimes at the expense of things we might have wanted to know - the reasons for Jacob's mother's (Pallant) death aren't clear, although it's implied to be alcoholism-related. Near the end the subtext is also made text a bit too obviously, with comments about cuts to precisely the kind of services that most helped Jacob turn his life around, compared to the prison system that almost sent him into a lifelong spiral.

But the details we do get really build the play's world - Graham focuses particularly on the estate where Jacob grew up, built to foster community by having the front doors face each other but ending up having the opposite effect: Creating a maze of dark walkways perfect for drug dealers, and the sense that the estate has its back turned to the rest of Nottingham; a case of town planning implementing a theory but not bothering to see if it works in practice.

There's also a clear sense that the turning point for David and Joan is accepting the fact that their son's death was meaningless, and that their way forward is to ensure Jacob's doesn't become another wasted life, instead helping him to become a force for good. And obviously it shouldn't be the case in the 21st century that Jacob's brother Sam (Boaden) feeling safe to come out to him is a sign of how far he's come in terms of being a physical danger, but there we are. The energy and action of Penford's production are what the publicity photos sell it on, but it's the quieter moments that most hit home.

Punch by James Graham, based on the book Right From Wrong by Jacob Dunne, is booking until the 26th of April at the Young Vic.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.