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Barbican, London
Punch and Judy are 350 years old this year – their first recorded performance in England dates from 1662 – and Improbable celebrate in style with Julian Crouch's down-at-heel vaudeville show, which allows the irrepressible wife-beating, child-slaying, death-defying Punch full rein. Even the Devil ("You're looking a little stressed," Mr Punch tells him) is tricked by the delinquent puppet, who proves that when it comes to pulling the strings he's really the one in charge.
In Improbable's vision, Messrs Harvey and Hovey, two bowler-hatted, unsuccessful travelling showmen, are putting on a Punch and Judy show. But as the story develops, relationships are thrown into sharp relief. It turns out that – as many have long suspected – the Pit theatre situated in the bowels of the Barbican is hell itself, a place where the show endlessly goes on.
As you would expect from Crouch, one of theatre's great designers, The Devil and Mister Punch is 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 ("I'm going to have to take down your particulars," the Policeman tells Miss Polly). Mr Hovey's longing, misread glances towards the musical accompanist, his inability to hold the signage the right way around, the air of desperation – all are played to ingenious and often comic effect.
My only reservation – and it is worth mentioning – is that the show is so slow, especially during its first hour. Things accelerate, but it's not until the final 30 minutes that aesthetic, tone and content finally come together, and the piece bursts into anarchic and wistful life.
