around the world with mr. punch

(May 9, 2012; London; midnight)
 

Welcome to the Around the World With Mr. Punch, the official members-only journal of The Worldwide Friends of Punch and Judy. This lively periodical has been a source of information and inspiration for Punch professionals and amateur enthusiasts since 1993. Your Editors, Glyn Edwards (UK) and Professor Freshwater (aka Diane Rains) (USA), are pleased now to bring you our signature, one-of-a-kind publication in a bold new format. Here in our Around the World With Mr. Punch blog you will find a wealth of articles, media, and special features devoted to The Punch and Judy Show tradition. New articles will be posted immediately after receipt and editing; no waiting between issues! Fresh content may show up at any time, so check back often. Or subscribe to our RSS feed so you won't miss a single delicious morsel! Just click on the "live feed" button above to activate your RSS subscription.

For even more excitement, take full advantage of this blog's interactive content! Read the "Submissions, please!" item for details.

That's the way to do it!

~ Professor Freshwater
 

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One of the benefits of this new, blog-based Around the World With Mr. Punch is the ease with which readers can contribute to the journal's content. We have always welcomed submissions from our Worldwide Friends of Punch and Judy members; indeed our journal depends on your help! You can participate in several ways:

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Two years in the planning and now down to three months of waiting. The Big Grin funding application to help celebrate Mr. Punch's 350th birthday in style is now in the hands of the funding body who'll make their ruling in January.

Meanwhile you can see the UK's plans at the new site (with a new logo) at www.thebiggrin350.com

Fingers crossed.
 

Have you ever wondered what puppets do on their day off? They go to the movies! Last month Punch and Judy and 120 other puppet residents of Minneapolis/St. Paul spent their leisure time at a special film festival created just for them. The Walker Art Center, in cooperation with Bedlam Theatre, designed this unique installation in The Walker's McGuire Theater as a wacky accompaniment to Improbable Theater UK's new production, The Devil and Mr. Punch.

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At 6:01 PM on May 21, 2011, I was bit disappointed. The world had been scheduled to end at 6:00 pm local time, and I was quite looking forward to aerial acrobatics of the faithful being raptured skyward. Would have been a great show. But by about 8:30 pm, whilst sitting in a delighted audience on the stage of the Walker Art Center's McGuire Theater, I had to think that perhaps the Apocalypse had arrived after all. Before me blustered the nasty, nightmarish, prickly pyrotechnics of Hell. And Mr. Punch was in charge.

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The late Punch scholar George Speaight is still arguing his case for Punch's origins — from beyond the grave! A Speaight essay entitled "Petrushka and Punch: National traditions and new developments" is available for free download on the web.

Thanks to Trev Hill for the link.

 

An application for close on £250,000 was submitted last week to the UK's Heritage Lottery Fund on behalf of the various individuals and groups who came forward to be a part of The Big Grin project looking to celebrate a certain anniversary in 2012. These range from individual performers through to the Victoria & Albert Museum, a couple of universities and many local authorities. A decision will be handed down in January as to whether the application gets through to the next level (thus triggering the next stage of the application process). It's a very long haul and –like all funding applications –an optimistic shot in the dark.

Meanwhile, the recent award to The Fedora Group for its South Coast Punch & Judy project "Oh We Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside" - which includes the city of Brighton & Hove as chronicled elsewhere in this blog - has been accepted for the ‘Inspire Mark’ which brands it within the Cultural Olympiad: the cultural arm of the London 2012 Olympics.

So Mr. Punch can say he's got his nose into the the Olympic cultural celebrations (and confounded some detractors) whatever the final Big Grin outcome. And if no money is forthcoming for his 350th birthday festivities he'll still have the biggest paupers' party he can throw in Covent Garden in May 2012. Fun is still free. And the whole world is welcome to come and join it. (Having done the various funding applications and nearly drowned in the paperwork, I can make this invitation without having to ask anyone else's permission!)


 

A recent item in the BBC's flagship political programme Newsnight brought the UK government's new 'Red Tape Tsar' face to face with Mr. Punch. The programme brought Lord Hodgson - the man charged with advising the Prime Minister on how to prune the excessive bureaucracy spawned by the previous government - to Hastings beach to see a version of my Mr. Punch's encounter with a Health & Safety Officer and to discuss red tape with the programme's roving journalist.

The picture above shows the bureaucracy-busting Lord watching Mr. Punch having a site inspection of his sausage machine. And we all know where that will lead.

His Lordship invited me to ring him afterwards at the Houses of Parliament to give him 'the view from the Prof' on red tape lunacy. Did I do so? You betcha!

The BBC site has a clip here
 

The Victoria and Albert Museum recently acquired the George Speaight Archive in lieu of inheritance tax due on his estate. The museum's press release was timed in order to make an August Bank Holiday story and was duly picked up - with masses of colour images of Punch and Judy - by most UK newspapers and by TV. An edition of the BBC's big rating The One Show featured the story along with some good publicity for Old Red Nose and cameo appearances by Martin Reeve, Brian Davey and Jackie Codman.

You can find details of the acquisition - which will become available digitised online - here.

The Theatre Museum of the V&A now becomes the gold standard archive for all Punch and Judy studies and - you read it here first! - has enthusiastically agreed to partner the funding application being prepared on behalf of the 350 Committee (see earlier postings) in order to celebrate that special anniversary in 2012.
 

Mr. Punch has infiltrated popular culture in many forms over the years and inspired some of the greatest comedic talents. The Marx Brothers certainly were well acquainted with Punch, as this excerpt from their film, "Monkey Business," illustrates:



I love the layers of homage in this routine! Vaudeville, which regurgitated the Marx Brothers whole, owed a huge debt to the comic traditions of Punch and Judy. Another layer: In my own Professor Freshwater's Punch and Judy Show, the Crocodile pretends to be several critters other than a Croc to fool Mr. Punch. At one point the clever reptile quacks. When Punch says "It's a duck!", Mr. Bottles (my bottler) quotes the famous Marx line "A duck? Why a duck!" Only the most devout Marxophiles in the audience ever get that joke!

Sean Keohane contributes additional information about this video: "The Punchman from "Monkey Business" (unseen, surreally, even in backstage shots), was Al Flosso... He was a friend of the Marx Brothers-- Bud Abbott had worked as his bottler at Coney Island-- and ran a magic shop in Manhattan that had once belonged to Houdini. Edgar Bergen was known to stop in, and so was my brother, when Al's son took over."