“Punch”, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Glenda Frank in New York
8 October 2025
Two British theatre companies, arriving with minimal fanfare in New York, have set off fireworks on Broadway. Last season Operation Mincemeat, a musical comedy created by the SpitLip ensemble (David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts who call themselves “makers of big dumb, musicals”) received enthusiastic reviews and won Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards. The British production (2019-2024) also won multiple awards.
Will Harrison and Lucy Taylor.
Photo credit: Matthew Murphy.
Operation Mincemeat opened February 2025 at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway for 16 weeks. The first extension was for a month, and the latest extension runs through February 2026. The plot is based on a crucial piece of World War II history, but it’s the ensemble and madcap direction by Robert Hastie that make the production electric.
Much of this can also be said about Punch, a drama from the Nottingham Playhouse by James Graham that is being performed concurrently at the Apollo Theatre in London’s West End and in Midtown Manhattan. It is based on a true story, Right From Wrong, an autobiography by Jacob Dunne about the single punch that killed James Hodgkinson, a 28-year-old paramedic. After serving his jail sentence, Dunne met James’ parents through Restorative Justice, an experimental programme. Dunne is now a campaigner for safer more resilient communities and holds a first-class degree in criminology.
The piece is, of course, moving and it is brilliantly staged with creative blocking on Anna Fleischle’s sparse dual-level set. The American cast stars Victoria Clark, Sam Robards, and Will Harrison in his Broadway debut. In this story-theatre piece, Harrison plays Dunne and serves as narrator in a muscular performance. His stamina is admirable, but this also distances us from Dunne as a young man.
Dunne is an attractive hoodlum, violent and eager to be a good mate, often proving himself in bar fights. He grew up in the British equivalent of the projects and had learning difficulties. His mother (Lucy Taylor) adored him and turned a blind eye, not believing what she was told by third parties. We don’t meet James who was with his father at the pub after a soccer game. They had never met Jacob and are mostly plot devices. As James’s mother, Victoria Clark moves from a desire for revenge, ambivalence and eventual affection for Jacob. Her arc and performance create a powerful, emotional centre piece as the drama develops to a celebratory close.
Playwright James Graham won a 2024 Olivier Award for soccer play Dear England. Ink, which also ran at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2019 and was nominated for a Tony Award, was about the rise of Rupert Murdoch. Here, Graham is handicapped by the book with its focus on Dunne who is neither a sympathetic nor compelling character. Director Adam Penford, artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse, uses his facility with physical theatre to craft a kinetic first act (Leanne Pinder, movement director) that itself delivers like a flurry of punches. But these scenes still feel dated, a throwback to the 1960s when causation was often factored into our understanding of criminal behaviour.
The tone of the second act shifts to the healing of both James’ parents and Jacob. At its worst it becomes a dramatized TED Talk, exemplary and uplifting but also not quite believable despite excellent performances, notably by Camila Canó-Flaviá who in addition to playing moderator Nicola is also Clare, a caseworker. Not only does Dunne turn his professional and personal life around, but he also overcomes his learning disability diagnosis to excel academically. A little more dramatization of his journey would have gone a long way.
