The Devil and Mister Punch
Improbable
The Devil and Mister Punch
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.
3.6 out of 5 based on 6 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Location |
London |
| Venue |
The Pit, Barbican |
| Director |
Julian Crouch |
| Cast |
. |
| From |
February 2012 |
| Until |
February 2012 |
| Box Office |
020 7638 8891 |
| |
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.
Reviews
The Guardian
Lyn Gardner
"A visual delight, played out on a design like a wooden advent calendar full of apertures and trap doors through which the puppets and actors appear. There are shifts of perspective and size, and it's chock-full of visual puns and jokes as well as mishearing and double-entendres."
10/02/2012
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Time Out
Andrzej Lukowski
"This affecting air of lament for popular entertainment's wilder pre-silver screen past gives this show just enough sense of purpose to compensate for its messiness ... But then, how tight is the average Punch and Judy plot? This is visually stunning, blackly comic and gently sad. Were Punch to look up from the flames below, he'd surely approve of this tribute."
13/02/2012
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The Times
Dominic Maxwell
"An amazing ride, filled with ideas about creativity, decline and above all death. From the first appearance of a bare hand against a blue sky, upon which a Mister Punch puppet is placed, right through to the chilling scene of two giant Punches stalking each other with baseball bats, the staging and the acting is superb."
09/02/2012
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The Stage
Nuala Calvi
"A deliciously dark tribute to our oldest theatrical icon."
08/02/2012
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The Financial Times
Sarah Hemming
"An ingenious, surreal piece of theatre, chiefly enjoyable for its mix of the farcical and the macabre, and for its quizzical approach to the relationship between the puppeteer and his puppets. It is a bit of a long joke, however, and the deliberate meandering of the show makes it feel over-extended and baggy in places. Not all the digressions warrant their inclusion."
08/02/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Kate Bassett
"Punch is a commedia-influenced glove puppet with a ruff and ghoulish rictus. In a gilded picture frame he dances against a blue sky, Crouch's references condensing many centuries, from the Middle Ages to Magritte."
12/02/2012
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