CENTURIES before The Simpsons and South Park came Punch and Judy.

Best is subjective, but this show is darker than any.

Its anti-hero is quicker of wit, sharper in riposte and, if the watcher wills it, more violent than any character in any television programme that has ever been screened.

A puppeteer, when whipped into a frenzy by an audience, won’t pull any punches.

It’s like the jazz of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

Fans have the power to draw out ever greater improvisations upon any theme that strikes a chord.

Bart, in a box, is stuck with a script.

Born of a theatre tradition that stretches back to Roman times, Punch, the show, has been hardened by, and is full of, street smarts.

Please the street, or be meat.

Ask any busker.

Punch, the character, leaves the kids of South Park for dead - and not just Kenny.

The mental and physical contortions demanded of a Punch puppeteer will see Australia’s two professors of Punch bathed in sweat this summer - although you won't see that. Tucked away in his booth, Keith Preston was on fire at Art @ the Hart.

He gives the swazzle a rare old swagger.

(The swazzle is Punch’s voice - a high-pitched delivery achieved with the aid of a reed in the mouth. It transposes over the voice box. Or something like that.)

The energy inherent in a Punch'n'Judy show is traditional.

“As a hand-puppet show, it’s 230 years old,” Keith says.

“It came about smack in the middle of the middle of the Industrial Revolution - about 1780. The world it reflects is this Georgian world, which is quite ruthless. There are public executions, convicts being transported, highway robbers … you know, it’s a tough life.

“The Punch and Judy show, to get attention on the street, is very fast, very knockabout, and it pulls together a story based on some contemporary characters. There’s a new police force; new animals being brought back, such as crocodiles; priests; hangmen; ghosts; some gory figures who represent the authority of the state, and the fact they can get you down; and the Devil himself.”

And there are characters from earlier times. These are clues to the English Punch’s true age.

“The executioner in Punch is Jack Ketch,” Keith says.

“Now, Jack Ketch operated in the late 1500s. He had special rooms at Newgate prison where he boiled the heads of traitors, to be hung on London Bridge. Those rooms were known for hundreds of years as Ketch’s Kitchen.”

Punch began to appear, as a marionette (a puppet on strings), in 1662, in stage plays that used, in most cases, live actors.

There was no need for context.

“Over the next 70 or 80 years, believe it or not, he appeared in nearly every play that was produced in the theatres of London,” Keith says.

“He’d just turn up as a comic character. Quite rough, quite ribald.”

Punch, the marionette, never had his own show - that only happened much later because of a happy accident of unhappy economics.

The character obviously owes something to the jester tradition of medieval times - Punch wears red and yellow - but there are many contributing influences.

“He’s a little bit Shakespearean - a bit like Falstaff,” Keith says.

“Punch has appetites. He likes to drink, he likes to sleep … if someone annoys him he’ll get a stick and belt them. If someone tries to arrest him he’s going to use every trick in the book to escape.

“He’s a clever fool … at least, he pretends to be a fool, but he’d not.

“This character, itself, is much older. When he arrived as a marionette in 1662 he’d come from an older tradition - the European comeddia tradition, which was satirical street theatre from Italy and France in the 1500s. There’s a German version, a Bavarian version, a Dutch version, I think there’s a Belgian version, there’s certainly a Russian version, there’s a Hungarian spin-off, and there’s a Portugese character like him … and the character is a bit like some of shadow puppets from Greece and Turkey.

“(Those characters were) what we call archetypes.

“Harlequin becomes the clown figure and Punchinello - which means Little Bird - evolves into Punch.”

And the character could be said to be even older.

“There is a theory that some of the clowns in the Roman circus had similar facial features to Punch,” Keith says, eyes dancing at the thought.

Whatever, it wasn’t until he became the English Punch that he became so potent.

Slap-stick, amorous, licentious.
Punch’s mixed heritage is evidenced in the language used by Punch and Judy people to communicate with one another - Romany, Italian and Cockney slang.

As mentioned, it was economics that saw Punch get his own show - Punch and Judy.

The Industrial Revolution was hard on many; actors more than most.

Most of the theatres closed down, and Punch - popular and without any representation or guild - was sent into the streets to prise open the pockets of the downtrodden throngs (mostly one-time serfs driven in from the countryside).
He lost the strings and got real bones and muscle.

And he got fast.

Later, Punch and Judy found its niche at the seaside resorts of southern England.

Each show was a two-person operation - a puppeteer, and a bottler. The bottler’s job was to drum up business - literally, until modern times.

“He’d use a drum, bang up a crowd, pass ‘round the bottle to pay for a bit of show … and if they didn’t get much money they’d move on fairly quickly,” Keith says.

“Sometimes they’d do 10 shows a day.”

Punch never caught on in Australia - Australians swim at the beach and have less of a need for other entertainments.
In England, television killed it in the ‘70s.

In modern times, attempts to revive the tradition here foundered on the rocks of political correctness.

“You can’t have a puppet hitting a baby (puppet),” Keith says.

“When I started, 13 years ago, someone wanted to book me to do a show at the University of Adelaide, and the student union wouldn’t book it, because it said the show promoted domestic violence.

“And I’m a vegetarian pacifist!

“I present the show because I think it’s an authentic piece of history, and it’s slap-stick.”
Like South Park, it’s a piss-take; an exaggeration.

In the last 18 months the tiny Punch industry has, in relative terms, taken off.

Keith and the most politically incorrect characters in showbiz have featured at the Adelaide Fringe, Royal Perth Show, the Mackay Arts Festival, the Melbourne Arts Centre, the National Folk Festival in Canberra, the Blue Mountains Puppet Festival, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, and others; all mainstream events and venues.

“When I started, you were lucky to get a kid’s birthday party,” Keith says.

Puppet Palace, at the Fringe, is a small showcase for Punch and Judy - Keith and wife Uma started it in last year as a showcase for other forms of puppetry.

Punch still reigns supreme.

Most nights, the Puppet Palace closes with a very punchy show by Lachlan Haig.

And Lachlan’s good.

The most experienced Punch professor in the land, he studied under an English master as a teenager.

Now the modern masters’ time has come.

Keith is happy to credit television programmes like The Simpsons and South Park with retuning the comedic sensibilities of the general population … to a degree.

“I think the American stuff never quite gets it,” he says.

“They’re never quite as whacky as the English. I’m a big fan of The Simpsons, but Americans mostly seem to have a strangely flat sense of humour.”

So phooey to the Yanks.

Punch never feels the need for graciousness, and it don’t matter none how you win.