Review: MR PUNCH AT THE OPERA, Arcola Theatre

It’s not every show that hands out party poppers as you go in. Aimed at young audiences, Mr Punch At The Opera whips together the iconic hand-puppets with a musical amuse-bouche.

The Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborn season often throws up pieces that are rarely heard live. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (also known as The Maid Turned Mistress) debuted in 1733 shortly before he died of tuberculosis aged just 26. Rather than being an attraction in its own right, this comic work was originally played during the interval of the more serious three-hour-long Il prigionier superbo. 

Mixing puppets and classic drama can be a stroke of genius if the 1992 film The Muppet Christmas Carol is anything to go by. Likewise, the seminal adult musical Avenue Q proved that getting puppets to collaborate with human singers can be an inspired choice. Director Becca Marriot’s decision to combine a slice of knockabout 18th century Italian comedy with even older characters derived from commedia dell arte doesn’t always pay artistic dividends but allows for some delightful silliness.

It arrives in East London as a two-hander with the score intact but now with an English libretto written by Marriot. Uberto has been anglicised to Hubert and is dynamically played by Matthew Kellett, a Charles Court Opera regular who, as the jester Jack Point, was the highlight of Opera Holland Park’s recent Yeoman Of The Guard. Opposite him as the long-suffering Serpina is the vibrant soprano Grace Nyandoro and there is real chemistry between the pair as they bounce off each other and the world of Mr Punch.

In keeping with the intended audience, Marriot keeps the tone light. There are some arias around mortality and gender inequality as well as the occasional saucy aside for the adults in the room - at one point, Hubert exclaims that “I’m all sticky/just a little accident/and I’m all wet” - but the general tone is very much infant-friendly. She makes great use of Nyandoro’s solid acting and Kellatt’s physicality, the latter jumping around the stage to the evident amusement of the smaller members of the audience. 

Around the central pair, professional Punch and Judy puppeteer Professor James uses his creations to bolster the thin plot: Hubert has a tug-of-war with a crocodile over a string of sausages, Serpina is wooed by the unromantic PC Plod and Mr Punch orchestrates the chaos while the rest pop up in supporting roles. It’s a curious setup that is not without some charm but the fluent singing and talking and the Professor’s shrill swazzle don’t always harmoniously coalesce.

Musically, there is little to complain about. Musical director Panaretos Kyriatzidis on the piano accompanied by Alison Holford’s strident cello are more than sufficient to jolt us along as we move through a pacy work which comes in at just 40 minutes (apparently 18th century operagoers took their intervals more seriously than their modern counterparts or maybe the loo queues were even longer back then).

Psychedelic rock drummer Spencer Dryden is credited with the phrase “get them young and bend their minds”. Whether Marriot has created any hardcore junior opera fans is debatable going by the press night audience but, while Mr Punch Goes To The Opera is not for the purists, like Birmingham Rep’s longstanding ballet The Snowman, it stands as a sprightly introduction to an art form which has fallen somewhat out of fashion this century. 

Mr Punch At The Opera continues until 24 August as part of the Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborn Festival.

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