Nothing prepared me for the overwhelming impact of this brilliant English National Opera production. Having sat through Harrison Birtwistle’s latest gory opera, The Minotaur, at Covent Garden four days earlier, I wasn’t exactly pining to hear 100 more minutes of his ferocious music – especially as Punch and Judy, his 1968 music-theatre shocker, was staged in London only last month. Also, ENO’s chosen director, the young American Daniel Kramer, was an unknown quantity in opera.

Not any more. I can’t recall seeing a production that so successfully grounded Punch in his seaside origins – circus-ring arena, fairy lights, red and yellow striped props, marching band, burlesque-style acting, and costumes (by Giles Cadle) that looked as if they had been plucked straight off Cromer Pier circa 1910 – yet which so boldly opened up the terrifying psychological hinterlands hinted at in Stephen Pruslin’s startling libretto. Nor one that so perfectly balanced the violently ritualistic puppet-play aspects of the story – the fourfold cycle of brutal murder, love, quest and rejection – against the evident human suffering that simmers under the surface.

A similar sense of light and shade was evident in Edward Gardner’s conducting of Birtwistle’s score. Where a lacerating blitz of sound or a sardonic, frenzied dance was required, the ENO orchestra certainly delivered. But by balancing and pacing the music so immaculately, Gardner brought out a hitherto unsuspected anguish and melancholy in the piece. Nowhere was that more evident than in the heartbreaking lament sung towards the end by Lucy Schaufer’s outstanding Mrs Punch.

It was Kramer’s directorial inventions that chiefly gripped the attention. There was the grave into which each of Punch’s victims ceremonially descended, to be showered with a shovelful of dust by Ashley Holland’s macabre, badger-faced Choregos.

There was the surreal appearance of six dancing Punches (stunningly choreographed by Quinny Sacks) to help the real Punch gleefully despatch his last victim.

Best of all, there was the Pagliacci-like moment near the end when Punch, believing that the show had concluded, wiped off his motley, only to be presented with the baby whom he burnt at the start of this macabre entertainment. The implication – that both he and we are forever swirling in an eternal vortex of violence and remorse – could not have been more aptly made.

A fired-up cast helped. Gillian Keith turned Pretty Polly, the Lolita-like object of Punch’s desire, into a kind of hyperactive go-go dancing doll, full of lascivious wriggles and demented coloratura swoops. Graham Clark and Graeme Broadbent made a characterful pair of bewigged grotesques as Lawyer and Doctor. And, rightly dominating every scene, Andrew Shore was a mesmerising Punch – callous yet clownish, an unredeemable thug yet a figure who still engaged our sympathy as he finagled his own escape from the gallows.

Go and see him, even if you have to commit a Punch-like atrocity to get a ticket.

Box Office: 020 7922 2922 Performances until April 27

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010