I associate them with seaside resorts in England & Wales, where they’d perform on the beach. I noticed them fairly often during holidays there during the late 1960s and I assume some are still there.
Wouldn’t occur to me to watch a show though!
I agree with this. I remember seeing them at the seaside when I was growing up (70s), particularly if there was a fair on. I also remember my parents hiring one to perform at one of my birthday parties.
Haven’t seen one for years, except on the soap Eastenders recently, which has a rather “London in aspic” quality about it, where everyone still knows their neighbours, works on a market stall and holds their wedding in the same pub.
I believe Punch and Judy originally derives from travelling performers in Italy, and came over to the UK about 400 years ago.
I hate to sound like an idiot, but what does
mean? Is it like “frozen in time” or “sealed in amber”?
In addition to being a Punch and Judy puppeteer, dad collected “Punchinalia” - Punch and Jody collectables. One that I remember was an ashtray with Mr. Punch’s name in various languages.
Frozen in time – a fairly romantic vision of a time at that. It’s not that the soap doesn’t show people in the current day, wearing modern clothes or covering modern topics, such as gay marriage, it does. But the show is based on an area of London I live in – Hackney in East London – which no longer bears any relation to the East London Eastenders depicts, where everyone still knows their neighbours, whole families still live in the same street (or same house), no immigrants ever move in, the local pub never gets turned into a trendy gastro pub or converted into flats, everyone still stands around the piano in the pub singing ‘roll out the barrel’, etc.
Hence they are the only show to have recently had a Punch and Judy performance, which most of us haven’t seen for real in decades.
I remember seeing them at village fetes as a child in 1970s Britain, and certainly they go with that depressing sub-Butlins holiday at the seaside experience. I remember as a preteen we rode our bikes from the Cotswolds to the coast (as part of a school field trip), and one of our chaperones mentioned that there was a beach at Weston-super-Mare. I have never been so disappointed in my life - and I distinctly remember a Punch and Judy show going on nearby.
I have never seen Punch and Judy in the U.S.
The only Punch & Judy I’ve seen was in a few towns in France.