Artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse, Adam Penford, 45, talks to Susan Elkin especially about Punch which opened at Apollo Theatre London this month and simultaneously on Broadway.
“Yes” chuckles Adam, who is talking to me via Zoom from New York, where he is in rehearsals. “It is very unusual for a new play to open in the West End and on Broadway at the same time. In fact, the only other example our research has thrown up is The Mousetrap!”
Adam discovered Jacob Dunne’s book Right from Wrong during Lockdown 1 in 2020 when he heard a podcast. Dunne, who had struggled with problems at home on a Nottingham council estate and at school, served 14 months in prison for manslaughter having killed someone with a single punch. His book tells a powerful story of guilt and redemption.
Adam and Jacob both grew up in Nottingham and each remembers being taken to the Playhouse for the pantomime (which Adam now directs every year) as children. “It took a while to build a rapport” says Adam, who eventually persuaded Jacob to agree to a play based on the book.
“The question then was who to commission to write it” says Adam. “I wanted James Graham – he grew up in Nottingham too – and he’s a wonderful Olivier Award-winning playwright, although there’s never any guarantee that you’ll find the right form however experienced the creatives are. Actually, we knew we were on to something with Punch almost from the start. The reactions of actors at the side watching their colleagues were very telling. It went down really well at Nottingham in 2024 and was well received at The Young Vic too.”
And now comes this high-profile revival on both sides of the Atlantic. “Yes, we’re all delighted” says Adam, who has a long list of fine directing credits including Dear Evan Hansen at Nottingham and The Sound of Music at Chichester Festival Theatre.
Adam initially found his way into drama through youth theatre run free of charge by Nottingham City Council. “Of course that’s gone now, sadly” says Adam, adding that many lives were shaped by it. “Quite a number of participants went on to work professionally in the performing arts industries. Others took the skills they’d acquired into different fields.”
Adam then went to Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) on an acting course. “I soon knew it wasn’t quite right for me and that it was directing which really appealed. In the end I completed it, though, and the tutors just gave me directing experience wherever they could. I’m glad now that I studied acting because it really helps me to direct actors.”
After college, Adam moved to London. “I built a career from doing a mixture of things: a lot of fringe theatre and, gradually, assistant directing in larger theatres. I freelanced for 18 years.”
Was he, I wonder, hankering to run a building – a theatre of his own – as most directors seem to be? “Not really. I always joked that the only one I’d really consider was the Nottingham Playhouse”.
The offer came in 2017. Adam had come full circle.
“It’s very different work from being a freelance director and I’ve had to work out how to do it as I’ve gone along” explains Adam, who says he is still learning all the time. “My predecessor, Giles Croft, had been in post for a long time, so of course as a new leader I needed to make changes and freshen things up which has inevitably involved staff changes. On a more obvious level Giles wasn’t keen on musical theatre, and I am, so we do more of that now.”
Adam has also carefully built stronger relationships with commercial producers which makes transfers easier. At the Apollo, for example, Punch is presented by KPPL Productions, Mark Gordon Pictures and Eilene Davidson Productions in association with the Young Vic and Nica Burns.
Every artistic director I’ve ever spoken to in recent years has, to some extent. lamented the reduction in audiences and confidence in the industry since the pandemic. Adam and Nottingham Playhouse is bucking the trend. “We have bigger houses now than we had before Covid” he says. “That’s great of course but costs are rising faster than ticket prices so it’s always a tricky equation.”
Adam and his colleagues plan the Nottingham Playhouse schedule two years in advance but like to leave some flexibility so that they can be responsive to topical opportunities. He is excited about a new play about Mary Whitehouse starring Maxine Peake this autumn and the regional premiere of Eureka Day, a political satire about a mumps outbreak in a San Francisco school. His own next show at Nottingham will be Sleeping Beauty, the annual panto.
Still only in his mid-forties, Adam is circumspect about future career plans because he is very fulfilled at Nottingham. When I push him, he admits that there is one job which might, just possibly, tempt him away if he were offered it but – with a grin – declines to tell me what it is. So we’ll have to wait and see.
Punch
theapollotheatre.co.uk/tickets/punch
22 September – 29 November 2025
