Witness a tragic comedy of manslaughter and love. It's Punch and Judy but as presented by Messrs Harvey and Hovey, a pair of broken vaudevillians who are now in the gutter and have been reduced to presenting a puppet show that goes wildly off-course. Featuring a lush score of bass fiddle, gin parlour piano, metronome and bells, this dark but hilarious show is performed on a gloriously theatrical wood-panelled set. Inside this shadowy world live a steaming crocodile, a parade of piggies, the devil and many other extraordinary characters. Age guidance 12+. Running time: 85mins with no interval
Dates: Opens 07 February 2012. 19:45. Feb12 2,3,4 at 19:15. Feb12 4,11,18,25 Mats 14:30 15 February 2012 19:45 - Audio Described 21 February 2012 - Sign Interpreted 25 February 2012 14:30 - Audio Described
Amid the current flood of anniversaries, Improbable are throwing one more into the mix - the 350th birthday of Punch, the club-wielding puppet synonymous with pier ends and gratuitous violence.
In this tribute to one of theatre’s oldest and most enduring institutions, director Julian Crouch and his team have reimagined a pair of real-life Victorian puppet masters, Messrs Harvey and Hovey, who enact Punch’s descent to hell after he (yet again) beats his wife Judy to death and throws their baby out the window.
What he finds down there is a Chapman brothers-esque vista of discarded, part-melted puppets who haunt but eventually can’t suppress the inherently unapologetic Punch with his archly-arrogant catchphrase “that’s the way to do it!”. Even two giant penises with limbs and Mephistopheles himself are unable to keep this man down.
Around the puppetry we see Harvey and Hovey (played by the accomplished Nick Haverson and Rob Thirtle) undergoing their own surreal odyssey, one that features knights, musicians, bulls, bubbles and a cello-playing matador.
It’s a veritable smorgasbord of Punch-related material, played out in and around an exquisite puppet theatre (designed by Crouch and Thirtle with Mike Kerns) that facilitates no end of peep show trickery.
But for all its stylistic ingenuity the script is surprisingly short on laughs and is wound out longer than the story merits. Perhaps Crouch’s obvious reverance for the Punch legend has in some way stifled the storytelling, but either way the show fails to engage for the entirety.
'But for all its stylistic ingenuity the script is surprisingly short on laughs and is wound out longer than the story merits.' You must have seen a different show to me, I laughed the whole way through. It is theatrical and magical and not too long at all. I usually fidget like mad and glance at my watch constantly during anything, but I can't even tell you how long it lasted. I was so engrossed in an evening that took me away from my everyday life. I loved it, and I don't say that too often about anything I see. - Shelley Silas
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