By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN? Saturday 1 March 2025, runs through 26 April 2025 RUNTIME: 145 minutes (including a 20-minute interval) Update: Transfers to the Apollo Theatre 22 September through 29 November 2025 Tickets

In 2011 Jacob Dunne fatally punched a man in an unprovoked attack and received a two-and-a-half-year custodial sentence for manslaughter of which he served 14 months. 

• Read on for reasons including how this is the best new play of the year so far

Punch by James Graham (Boys From The Blackstuff, National Theatre) is based on Dunne’s book Right From Wrong and explains how he found himself himself homeless, unemployed and struggling to get his life back on track after prison but, with the encouragement of his victim’s parents, he tries to transform his life.

We meet David Shields who plays the 19-year-old Dunne, who grew up on the Meadows estate in Nottingham blighted by drugs, violence and criminality, and learn he loves getting into fights and every weekend he and his friends go into the city centre to start a ruck.

In the summer of 2011 the victim of a single Dunne punch, 28-year-old trainee paramedic James Hodgkinson, dies after spending nine days in a coma.

It’s not really until the show’s 2nd half when the concept of restorative justice is introduced that the emotional pull of this show becomes clear.

Dunne’s probation officer says James’ parents, David and Joan, want to ask him some questions about the night of the punch and he agrees to help them make sense of what happened.

They communicate through mediators from the restorative justice charity Remedi, and after several months of letters and hearing in detail what they and their family had gone through, Dunne goes back into education, studies criminology at university and the 3 meet.

It’s when Dunne asks David and Joan for their forgiveness that the extraordinary nature of this story and those at its heart become clearer and we can hear audience members sobbing all around us.

Coronation Street’s Julie Hesmondhalgh in particular gives a wonderfully warm and sensitive performance as a mother determined not to let another life become ruined after the punch that led to her son’s death – even if it was the teenager who threw it.

Government research shows that restorative justice provides an 85% victim satisfaction rate and a 14% reduction in reoffending.

This is extraordinarily sensitive subject matter and Graham, who was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, understands the part its location plays as well as deftly rounding all the characters so we understand why they might be behaving in the way they are and this £10 1st preview audience rises as 1 at its conclusion to give it a rousing standing ovation .

Last month we said that Mike Bartlett’s Unicorn was the best new play of the year so far but Punch left us floored and convinced it was the new holder of the title.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Young Vic Tickets
• Have you seen a James Graham show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this preview? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook