Punch - heart-pounding drama returns home to Nottingham

★★★★★

James Graham's Punch is having something of a homecoming.

The cast of Punch, photo by Pamela Raith

The Nottingham playwright's affecting piece recounts Jacob Dunne's actions leading up to, and following, his delivery of one fatal blow that killed James Hodgkinson in a street fight, mere minutes' walk away from where we're sat in the Playhouse.

The writing draws a city centre, undercut with class divide, high unemployment rates, homelessness and potholes. Alongside Jacob, played with deep reverence by Jack James Ryan, we drink in the converted church that is now Pitcher and Piano, dance in the Yates' next to Maccy D's in Market Square, and yell from the top of Trent Bridge. In a relentless, tumbling monologue, Jacob, wearing a crisp white shirt and blue jeans, appears to run this town. It's delivered with bravado as he scales Anna Fleischle's set, her concrete underpass a lair, the metal railings swung from, and her bridge a pedestal. He explains how, on the night in question, he was on drugs (he's "in sales") and out with friends, hungry for some action. He threw one punch, which proved fatal, and ran away.

Suddenly, the lights go dark, and we meet a mum weighted down with a devastated stillness (a fantastic Finty Williams), and a dad scarred by horror (Matthew Flynn, a chameleon of sorts): James' parents. They hear of restorative justice and, guided by Nicola (Grace Hodgett Young), arrange contact with the man who killed their son following his release from prison, where he served less time than those who looted in the 2011 riots. The cast, minus Ryan, multi-role à la Come From Away, repositioning chairs and switching characters with a sweater or a hat. Robbie Butler's lighting is just as transportive, adding a golden glow to the Meadows council estate and blinding sterility to a young offender's prison. In tandem with the sound (designed by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite), the production has a slick 360 atmosphere - flares explode, and sirens blare from our periphery.

Under disco lights and fireworks, Leanne Pinder's movement verges on ballet. She has hoods street dance, youths dodging security cameras like spies in a heist, and support groups balance the weight that they shoulder. It works slickly with the ensemble, which also includes Jacob's mum and later case worker, Laura Tebbutt and Jacob's best friend and later brother, Elan Butler. The performances are so balanced, so pure, that there's a faint undercurrent of a love story so great, I refuse to Google it so as not to suspend my belief.

It's here in Nottingham that Graham's intricacies really land, like his quips about family holidays to Skegvegas, affectionately calling one another "duck" and the cheers from the cricket ground. Nobody here is presented as monstrous or villainised, nor is any part of this tragic tale sensationalised. His script is bittersweet, funny in parts, and crucially includes facts and figures: there have been 60 one-punch deaths in the last ten years, and the Meadows was a social experiment for the "aspirational working class" gone wrong and then neglected. There are no excuses, and this was no accident. Director Adam Penford is masterful, mostly in that he breaks the fourth wall, inviting audiences in to mourn, to be angry and to have space to cry.

Graham once again proves himself as a vital voice not only for this region but for the people.