Recently I have been losing hope that any good play will ever be written again and grown increasingly tired of weak modernisations of brilliant classics. Thank goodness for Robert Icke on the remake front and for James Graham on the front of the originals. I had previously seen his Best of Enemies at the Noel Coward and enjoyed it greatly; Punch was even better.

Commissioned by Nottingham Playhouse, the story is based on the book Right From Wrong by the main character of the play – Jacob Dunne. Despite plenty of comic relief, it is not a light-hearted watch. It is raw, it is tragic, it is severe, and it is devastating. It oscillates between Jacob’s internal narrative and narratives of the characters he has impacted. I was left sobbing uncontrollably, desperately trying not to wail out loud and disturb those around me. Not only because of the overwhelming empathy the story engendered in me as a mother, but because I could never measure up to the character of Joan, the mother. This play forces the audience to acknowledge everyone’s humanity and confront their own limitations. I cried, because I could not imagine finding that level of compassion or forgiveness within me. I was not the only one drying my eyes…

Where the play briefly falls down somewhat is when it explains the social context underpinning Jacob’s choices. Comments about the social politics of council estates, wealth redistribution and urban planning come across too didactic and lacking in subtlety. I do not like being openly lectured in the theatre as I get enough of that in mainstream media. Theatre does not need to be this openly preachy.

But that aside, everything else about this performance was pretty much perfection. The stage design by Anna Fleischle might be quite stripped back, but the versatility of the concrete underpass tunnel encased in runways with metal rails is breathtaking, even doubling up as a credible rollercoaster at one point. It needed nothing but a couple of chairs and a side table to transport the audience from a Nottingham party club to a support circle to a prison.

Undoubtedly this transformation was aided by the stunning lighting design by Robbie Butler -houses appeared out of nowhere, police cars arrived and left – Robbie created an entire city out of light.

And now to the acting. I am officially in love with David Shields. He was the absolute antithesis of Rami Malek in Oedipus, with an abundance of expression and amazing physicality to his acting. Charismatic and captivating, he seemed to fly between the two sides of the stage stairs at times suspended on the railings at other times hurtling up and down, filling the entire stage with his presence. The ADHD kid desperate for a fight, the gang member evading pursuit, the drug dealer avoiding detection. He did not just deliver his monologues, he attacked the audience wielding a machine gun of words. He raced through Jacob’s story with swagger until insecurity overtook. He marked out the transition into disintegrated anguish, encapsulating this in movement, mannerisms, flickering eyes, tensing muscles, even right down to the breathing. The person we meet in the first scene could not contrast more strongly with the person earning the stand-up ovation at the end. All I can advise is when you go and see this when it transfers to the West End, choose seats closer, not further from the stage, as you do not want to miss a beat of the intensity of his performance.

And go you must, as it has been indicated that the cast will remain the same. And the rest of the cast is equally as brilliant – five actors playing 14 roles, switching characters in seconds, with the change of a jumper of the flick of a hair tie, sometimes not even leaving the stage. And yet you have no doubt you are watching a different character altogether. This would be impressive for any staging but exacerbated here because of the emotional load each individual character carries. Sometimes I worry that I have become jaded, that I see too many performances and have become too cynical, too difficult to please. But then you participate in an event like this, and you are reminded why there is nothing that compares to theatre. Nothing that can take you breath away quite like the punch that this performance delivers.