harbour green · seats no one (standing) · proprietor: old j. partridge · the usual
stripes of red and white canvas on four narrow poles, set up each season on the harbour green. the booth is higher than a man; the operator stands inside it, on a box, in the dark, with the puppets on his hands and a small kettle of water at his feet against the heat. he speaks for both characters, with a tin whistle in his cheek for punch's voice.
the audience is whoever passes: children at the front sitting on the grass with sticky hands; mothers behind them holding the smaller ones up; men at the back who pretend to be passing through. the laughter is the same laughter that has been heard from the same green for two hundred years. it is not, even now, polite laughter.
the most memorable performance is the usual, performed every time, in which punch hits everybody, including the crocodile, the policeman, the doctor, and finally the devil, who in this version laughs and hits him back. the children find this both unfair and entirely right. they do not yet have the word for what they think.
field-note partridge keeps the puppets in a leather attaché between performances. the crocodile he keeps separately, in newspaper. he has never said why.
the marionette stage a shadow-puppet stage the kitchen theatre the harbour noise