Film: Judy & Punch
I’m a five year old sucking on a stick of rock on a sunny beach at Southend-on-Sea. And I’m terrified.
And thrilled at the violent antics of the puppets of the Punch & Judy show: stick-weilding Punch, weeping Judy and the baby, the sausage-stealing dog, snapping crocodile and puffing policeman.
Fast forward a few decades and the 16th century story is being re-told in a dark new film, Judy & Punch, released last Friday.
The setting is the anarchic town of Seaside, nowhere near the sea, where puppeteers Judy and Punch are trying to resurrect their marionette show against a backdrop of witch-stoning, poverty and deprivation. Austerity-on-Sea would be an apt name for this town.
Ambitious showman Punch (DAMON HERRIMAN) is charismatic and charming when sober, a misogynist monster, unfaithful wife-beater and feckless father when on the whiskey. His talent as a puppeteer is surpassed by the gentle Judy (MIA WASIKOWSKA) who attempts to escape her vicious husband.
A dark and forbidding forest peopled by women cast from the town provides sanctuary until, like a heroine on a black steed (hired from that irritating bank advert?) Judy returns to right the wrongs of a dystopian society and to deliver justice to Punch.
There were times when I was back to that little girl, peeping through my fingers in horror, recoiling at the slap-stick brutality. But also laughing at the weeping drunk who complains about yet another public hanging: ‘I prefer a witch burning myself, but I suppose they have to to mix it up or we’d get bored.’
As the credits roll there’s black and white footage of other five year olds watching a live Punch & Judy show, showing all the wide-eyed emotions of generations spell-bound by this ancient story.
JUDY & PUNCH, WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MIRRAH FOULKES and STARRING MIA WASIKOWSKA and DAMON HERRIMAN, PRODUCED BY MICHELE BENNETT, NASH EDGERTON AND DANNY GABAI, Cert: 15
