Punch review

It revolves around a raw, compelling performance from David Shields as Jacob. The young man we meet initially – eyes glittering and eager, eyebrows perpetually raised in question or challenge, loping, leaping and swaggering along the walkways around his home and the pubs, clubs and streets of the city centre – becomes more contained, more diffident and quietly spoken in the aftermath of his crime. Shields is potently watchable – crucially, given that the play itself is in essence almost an enhanced monologue. Jacob unspools events in first-person direct address, dropping in and out of his narrative for episodic encounters with his struggling single mother, his mates, support workers and, finally, James’ devastated parents Joan and David.

Jacob’s account is vivid – his talk of “going out and lashing out”, of “blood and validation, selling drugs and pulling girls” – and the early frenetic energy is involving, with Shields and the role-swapping company springing around Anna Fleischle’s design of a double stairway and dirty paving. Yet the dialogue and characterisation in the linking scenes feel flimsy. It’s only in the later encounters between the Hodgkinsons – movingly played by Julie Hesmondhalgh and Tony Hirst – and Shields’ Jacob, when all three bring their pain to the table, that the dramatic impact of the piece really comes close to conveying the magnitude of the events: it’s emotionally devastating.

Elsewhere, there are slightly self-consciously interpolated discussions of the hollowing out of post-industrial communities, of architecturally disastrous housing where drug-dealing and gang violence breed, and the impact of government cuts on probation and rehabilitation systems. Important, worthwhile stuff, but it’s delivered by thinly written figures who too often feel like mouthpieces. For all that, though, this is a play with a powerful message about the value of individual lives, the terrible impact of a thoughtless act of violence, and the almost miraculous capacity of human beings for understanding and change.