On stage and in the movies, scenes set in a group therapy session or a psychiatrist’s office usually come off as something of a cheat. We’re offered a lot of psychological details and explanations without much effort from the writer. That theatrical shortcut is only part of the problem with James Graham’s new play “Punch,” which opened Monday at MTC Samuel J. Friedman Theatre after its world premiere at the U.K.’s Nottingham Playhouse in 2024.
In “Punch,” it’s not really a therapy session so much as it is a “restorative justice” meeting between two parents, (Victoria Clark and Sam Robards), and the young man (Will Harrison) who killed their son with just one lethal blow during a pub brawl. The 19-year-old is named Jacob because he is the author, Jacob Dunne, who was convicted of manslaughter for killing Joan and David’s son James Hodgkinson and went on to write “Right From Wrong” and co-founded the Common Ground Justice Project — of which Joan and David are advisors.
To criticize a play that tells this story of transformation is to be a grump. But good intentions aren’t enough to make a good play. The suspense leading up to the first meeting between the parents and Jacob is palpable, and in those early moments, it’s clear that there’s a lot of pent-up emotions ready to erupt at the mere choice of a wrong word, much less a whole question or pointed accusation. Obviously, the three of them eventually come to more than an understanding; they become good friends and Jacob goes on to have a beautiful wife, an adorable baby and a successful career. So where’s his Nobel Prize? And more important, where’s the drama after two hours and 20 minutes? The resolution here is much too easy and pat. Maybe that’s the way it transpired in real life, but the stage is another world.
Yes, it feels good to know that, occasionally, convicts like Jacob can turn their life around and go on to do good. And even more heartwarming, before he delivered the lethal punch, Jacob had all sorts of other formidable odds to overcome, stuff like dyslexia and autism, not to mention an economically disadvantaged childhood. We learn all these things because Will Harrison tells us every unfortunate feature of Jacob’s life. It is a narrative that’s not so much dramatized as it is told. Actually, it’s shouted at us by Harrison, who is an actor of not much nuance.
His loud performance is of a piece with Adam Penford’s splashy direction, which punctuates every other sentence coming from Harrison’s mouth with lots of lighting (by Robbie Butler) and sound effects (by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite).
There’s something else that Penford does that’s really grating. Even though he has 10 actors on stage, he relies on leads Clark and Robards to play minor characters with a mere switch of a hairdo or a shirt. It’s especially unfortunate to see Clark, a fine actor, resort to cheap tricks to go from playing the levelheaded mom to the cute grandma to some rowdy young street urchin.
As a playwright, Graham is as unsubtle here as he was with his previous ripped-from-the-headlines Broadway offering, “Ink,” about Rupert Murdoch. In one “Punch” scene, he has the owner of some Amazon-like warehouse, where Jacob briefly works on his way to rehabilitation, lecture us about an economy that has gone from producing things to simply shipping things. It’s a five-minute speech that I’ve heard at least once a week on MSNBC and delivered to better effect. To make it even more insufferable, Piter Marek delivers this New Finance 101 talk in the same hectoring manner that Harrison uses. And, of course, in another of Penford’s quick character switcheroos, Marek throws off his sports jacket to play a street thug in the very next scene.
Awkward, yes; impressive, no.
