Review | ‘Punch’ lands hard at first, then holds back

James Graham’s new British drama “Punch,” which is being produced on Broadway by Manhattan Theatre Club following its London debut, begins like a thunderclap and ends in near silence.

If the first act hits like a fist, the second act opens a hand. That transformation from kinetic, near-musical chaos to quiet moral reckoning is both the play’s greatest risk and its defining feature.

Adapted from the memoir “Right from Wrong” by Jacob Dunne, the play follows a young man whose single impulsive punch outside a Nottingham bar ends another man’s life. The story unfolds across more than a decade, from Jacob’s chaotic adolescence to his uneasy adulthood. What begins as a tale of youthful recklessness becomes a meditation on guilt, forgiveness, and the possibility of redemption.

The first act, e