Punch & Judy Professors and Puppeteers from all over the country and abroad gather to perform in the Garden of St Paul’s Church on the second Sunday in May near the spot where Samuel Pepys first recorded sighting Mr Punch in May 1662.
I’ve never particularly appreciated Punch and Judy, but curiosity eventually won out. I figured I might as well attend properly and try to understand what people actually see in it.
On arrival, the setup is always the same: rows of small booths, each performer presenting their version of the show. For the most part, it feels like repetition. The same routines, the same beats, recycled again and again, with each puppeteer trying to outdo the last through minor variations. One might swap the baby for a crocodile; another might tweak the pacing or exaggerate the violence. Occasionally, someone attempts to modernise it—introducing a bit of politics, or hand puppets caricaturing MPs—but even those gestures feel superficial.
There’s a strange lack of continuity. You have very elderly performers—people who look as though they should be in a care home—sharing the space with children wearing top hats and brightly colours waistboards trying their hand at the form. What’s missing is any real sense of progression, evolution, or mentorship. It feels suspended in time.
One figure does stand out, though: Jive Handler. He’s the head, or at least a leading representative, of the Punch and Judy Guild of Great Britain. I don’t know the current membership numbers, but they’re reportedly very low. Jive is impossible to miss. He looks almost homeless, and whenever I’ve attended events connected to the wider puppetry industry, he’s there—representing the organisation, lamenting the lack of funding, and voicing the same grievances.
In many ways, he feels emblematic of the state of Punch and Judy itself: stubbornly present, deeply traditional, but struggling to justify its place in the contemporary cultural landscape.