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Synopsis 'My dad said he jumped buses. Horseboxes. Jumped an aqueduct once. He was gonna jump Stonehenge but the council put a stop to it.' On St George's Day, the morning of the local county fair, Johnny Byron, local waster and modern day Pied Piper, is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his children want their dad to take them to the fair, Troy Whitworth wants to give him a serious kicking and a motley crew of mates want his ample supply of drugs and alcohol. Downstairs
Jez Butterworth's epic new play Jerusalem, billed as a “comic, contemporary vision of life in our green and pleasant land”, opened to critics at the Royal Court last night (16 July, previews from 10 July), with Ian Rickson directing a company led by former Globe artistic director Mark Rylance and star of The Office and Pirates of the CaribbeanMackenzie Crook.
Crook plays Ginger, friend and partner-in-crime of Johnny Byron (Rylance), who is a limping, caravan-dwelling ex-stuntman and all-round village rogue and modern-day Pied Piper. It’s St George's Day, the morning of the local county fair, and Johnny is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his children want their dad to take them to the fair, Troy Whitworth wants to give him a serious kicking and a motley crew of mates want his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.
Jerusalem is designed by Ultz, with sound by Ian Dickinson and music composed by Stephen Warbeck, continuing its limited run to 15 August 2009.
Described variously as a “feast of British character acting”, “startlingly brilliant” and “one of the must-see events of the summer”, suffice to say Jerusalem can be counted a palpable hit with the overnight critics. With a running time of over three hours (including two intervals), Butterworth's epic comedy was described by Whatsonstage.com's Michael Coveney as “an alternative state-of-the-nation play”, and by The Times' Benedict Nightingale as a “state-of-Olde-England play”. But differing definitions aside, they and the rest of the critical vanguard were united by their appreciation of the “ribald humour” Rickson's “superb” direction and the “beautiful” acting of the company. The “effortlessly charismatic“ Mark Rylance wasn't so much showered as drenched in praise, while Mackenzie Crook and Tom Brooke were singled out among the “first-rate support”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) - “Jez Butterworth’s new play Jerusalem, superbly directed by Ian Rickson, atmospherically designed by Ultz in a great forest of beech trees, is a wonderfully vivid three-act alternative state-of-the-nation play - running at well over three hours with two intervals - that plugs into urban myths and rural legends with an epic sense of the mystery of life in dull times … Mark Rylance embarks on the rollercoaster ride of his performance as a mischievous wild man, brimful of stories, banned from every pub in the neighbourhood, including the one run by Gerard Horan’s hangdog landlord who has been roped into the festivities as a Morris dancer; he’s only allowed his three grams of 'whizz' after giving a dejected display … Other regulars at Rooster’s include Mackenzie Crook’s dilapidated ex-plasterer Ginger, with ideas of being a deejay; Tom Brooke’s wild-eyed Lee who emerges disoriented from inside an old sofa having burnt all his things and bought a one-way ticket to Australia; and a pair of teenage girls played with forward insouciance by Jessica Barden and Charlotte Mills … It’s a glorious evening, a feast of British character acting at its very best, led by Rooster Rylance at the top of his game.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph (four stars) - “A green and pleasant land at the Royal Court? You must be joking … In a play blessed with what I suspect will prove an award-winning performance by the great Mark Rylance, the dramatist shows that matters can turn every bit as nasty in the countryside … But though there are several of the Royal Court's trademark 'in your face' shock tactics and an exceptionally high swear word count even by the exacting standards of the address, this rich three-hour play is also tender, touching, and blessed with both a ribald humour and a haunting sense of the mystery of things … The effortlessly charismatic Rylance also has scenes when he tells magical stories and seems endowed with mystic powers, others when he appears suddenly menacing … And in scenes with his six-year-old son, he conjures a mixture of tenderness and terrible loneliness that is almost too painful to watch … The carping might complain that this is a baggy, untidy play. I'd say that it is rich, strange and continuously gripping, and Ian Rickson's beautifully acted production, with a superb woodland design by Ultz, is one of the must-see events of the summer.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (four stars) “From the start, in which a fairy appears beneath a tacky English flag to recite Blake’s Jerusalem, you know that he’s worried about what the bureaucrats, the lookalike housing estates and, not least, the confused and alienated country people themselves are doing to our pleasant pastures and mountains green … His Jerusalem is a bold, ebullient and often hilarious State-of-England or (almost) State-of-Olde-England play. At the stage’s centre is an American-style trailer, surrounded by discarded furniture and trees, and at the evening’s centre is its inhabitant. Mark Rylance’s Rooster Byron is an anarchic maverick, a Wiltshire lord of misrule, mythologised by his shambolic retinue of underage girls and male layabouts, among them Mackenzie Crook as a forlorn, gangling loser called Ginger. No, Rooster didn’t manage to jump Stonehenge on a motorbike, but he tells a tall story, fights a wild fight, and has stuck up two fingers at authority for aeons.”
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (four stars) “In Jez Butterworth’s energetic new play William Blake’s vision of 'England’s green and pleasant land' is transmuted into a fiesta of bucolic misrule. Set in a wood in an obscure part of Wiltshire on St George’s Day, Jerusalem is a paean to anarchic self-expression. It proudly repudiates the sterility of a world governed by Asbos, health and safety regulations and the micromanagement of pleasure ... Like the poet whose name he shares, Johnny Byron is mad, bad and dangerous to know … Yet amid the narcotic carnage he also proves a curiously heroic figure, majestic despite his many flaws. In the hands of Mark Rylance he is an amoral aphorist, hedonistic sloth, piratical humorist and enthusiastic baiter of the 'sausage-fingered constabulary'. He may be grubby and dishevelled, but intermittently he is Napoleonic … Rylance has first-rate support. Mackenzie Crook excels as Johnny Byron’s almost wifely sidekick Ginger, and Tom Brooke as a young man whose faraway stare betrays a life given over to late nights and contraband substances … Besides moments of gut-busting humour, the play is lit up by a profane intelligence that zeroes in on the pedantry of the nanny state. And, in Johnny Byron, Butterworth has created a thrilling role. Rylance’s is an astonishing performance, which confirms that he is one of our finest stage actors.”
Ben Dowell in thelondonpaper (five stars) “Jez Butterworth's startlingly brilliant new play is a tragic and hilarious vision of life in an English country community … Office star Mackenzie Crook’s loyal Ginger and Tom Brooke’s dreamer Lee are particularly impressive as Byron’s comrades, larger-than-life but carrying an authentic ring of druggie boredom and deprivation amid the grot of this brilliantly-realized glade … And whether Byron is a modern day Bottom leading an anarchic carnival, or a troubled loser harbouring teenage girls, he is somehow redeemed by his evocation (however heartfelt or otherwise) of mythical giants and gypsy Kings … Because behind the can-strewn turf and some bellyachingly good comic set pieces, his personality and myth-making motors a profoundly rich and complex story of England and the English, how we treat the land and our place in its myths and landscape.”
It is a rare thing not to want something to end but so it was last night watching Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem; to say I was bedazzled just about sums it up.
Returning to the Apollo Theatre for a limited run after its massive transatlantic success, this is possibly the final chance to see Mark Rylance as Johnny 'Rooster' Byron and I think it's time to sell granny to get a ticket.
Rylance is an actor at the peak of his prowess, a quivering, swaggering behemoth. In Byron Butterworth has created for him a modern English folk legend; a protector of maidens, confessor of undesirables, Pied Piper of good hearted children and indifferent rats, this Gypsy King is as wild and dark as the woods that protect him.
Today is St George's Day and the last day Byron has left before he is evicted from the woods that bear his name by an officious Council and rather more painfully, a disgruntled community.
As we hear the strands of a local county fair down the hill, a May Queen goes missing and Byron's motley crew swirl around him; Ginger (Mackenzie Crook) the perennial underdog, Lee (Johnny Flynn) leaving for Australia at dawn the next day, Davey (Danny Kirrane) slaughterer of 200 cows, good time gals Pea and Tanya (Sophie McShera and Charlotte Mills) and The Professor (Alan David), a whimsical pronouncer of Arthurian legends. Trainers and hoodies aside, this lot could be Oberon's faeries; they are as playful, kind and cruel.
A St George's Cross smiles benignly down on their revels and a canopy of trees forms a thick backdrop. England's green and pleasant land is a silent partner in this tale of an old dare devil hamstrung by laws that seek to neutralise him. Butterworth links Byron to his environment viscerally, just what is in his pitch black stare that makes people tremble? It feels like it comes from beneath and within him.
Underpinning this poetry there is a violence and brutishness to Jerusalem and a hell of a lot of humour. Butterworth's bang up-to-date references to Girls Aloud and the Middleton sisters place this world firmly within the England we now inhabit. Ian Rickson's rich and finely tuned production is a roller coaster that will have you guffawing one minute and gasping the next.
Rylance fuses all this into an electric multifaceted man. Both charming teller of tales and supplier of drugs to children, his Byron embodies these and many more contradictions, his bluster and wit hiding a deep seated and inconsolable sadness and anger. It is a towering performance; at the end as he calls on his ancestors, pounding a drum to summon giants, one feels the very foundations of the Apollo Theatre might break.
It’s back and it’s better than ever. Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem is deservedly sweeping the best play awards, and Ian Rickson’s brilliant production with Mark Rylance’s majestic performance as Johnny “Rooster” Byron at its centre gives the West End its finest new play for some time.
So we have a choice on Shaftesbury Avenue between the call of the wild and the tragedy of capitalism in Enron: it’s a wonderful dilemma, but with Jerusalem you feel something deep and atavistic is being unleashed in this woodland retreat in the heart of a Wiltshire forest on St George’s Day.
Jerusalem is a beggar’s banquet, a feast of fools, an awakening of old legends, as Johnny and his tribe bemoan the encroachment of the housing estate, the cheapening of the fairground revels, the banning of bad behaviour and the officialdom of the Kennet and Avon constabulary who are serving an eviction order on Johnny’s metallic caravan and coke-head copse.
Set over 24 hours, Johnny and his crew – including Mackenzie Crook’s dazed, delirious deejay, Alan David’s nostalgic professor, Tom Brooke’s moon-faced dope head and Danny Kirrane’s hilarious plump xenophobe – trade stories without losing the dynamic of the drama.
The Royal Court cast is intact, save for the re-casting of Johnny’s ex-wife, Dawn, whom Amy Beth Hayes now invests with even more spirit and poignancy (despite corpsing badly on last preview). The young girls are great, too, though Jessica Barden needs to improve her audibility.
The Shakespearean anti-hero provides Rylance with his greatest ever modern role, a wounded warrior of the woods with elements of Falstaff, Jack Cade and, in the last act, one of Richard Widmark’s hunted, haunted hoodlums.
He rises to the challenge magnificently. This is now one of the great performances of our time: sly, funny, reprehensible, big-hearted, barrel-chested, technically awesome and physically monumental.
The play is rich, long, full of great speeches and crude incident, rollicking Chaucerian language, set in an enclave of towering beech trees designed by Ultz and bathed in a golden light by Mimi Jordan Sherin (though the passage of the day is not strictly observed) while the beating of the drums merges with the stomping of the gods, the jangling feet of the Morris dancers and the distant echoes of a country fair on a distant day like today. You’ll be astonished and overjoyed to find this in the West End.
- Michael Coveney
NOTE: The following FOUR STAR review dates from 7 July 2009, and this production's premiere at the Royal Court
It’s St George’s Day in the heart of the forest, and the Queen of the May, a tentative teenager in fairy wings, sings William Blake’s famous anthem; we’ll hear the drumming of those feet in ancient time before long, and loudly, too, at the end of the evening.
The Flintock county fair is in full swing, and the community liaison officers of Kennet and Avon council are serving an eviction order on Johnny “Rooster” Byron, a spaced out middle-aged middle earth tramp, a Wiltshire Robin Hood living in a mobile home surrounded by wastrels.
Jez Butterworth’s new play Jerusalem, superbly directed by Ian Rickson, atmospherically designed by Ultz in a great forest of beech trees, is a wonderfully vivid three-act alternative state-of-the-nation play – running at well over three hours with two intervals – that plugs into urban myths and rural legends with an epic sense of the mystery of life in dull times.
Rooster is railing against the new estate, but he also knows that the houses will need re-painting before too long. He greets the new day – we’ve had a brief burst of the wild party night preceding it – by mixing what is obviously his habitual hair of the dog: milk and a raw egg laced with vodka and spiced with a sachet of speed.
Thus Mark Rylance embarks on the rollercoaster ride of his performance as a mischievous wild man, brimful of stories, banned from every pub in the neighbourhood, including the one run by Gerard Horan’s hangdog landlord who has been roped into the festivities as a Morris dancer; he’s only allowed his three grams of “whizz” after giving a dejected display.
Other regulars at Rooster’s include Mackenzie Crook’s dilapidated ex-plasterer Ginger, with ideas of being a deejay; Tom Brooke’s wild-eyed Lee who emerges disoriented from inside an old sofa having burnt all his things and bought a one-way ticket to Australia; and a pair of teenage girls played with forward insouciance by Jessica Barden and Charlotte Mills.
Butterworth’s deal is that we’ve lost something of our souls in the process of civilisation and the onward march of morality, and in one brilliant scene with his former partner Dawn (Lucy Montgomery) and their six-year-old son (Lenny Harvey), you smell the price Rooster’s paid for the liberty he pursues. It’s a glorious evening, a feast of British character acting at its very best, led by Rooster Rylance at the top of his game.
I saw this last night and wasn't particularly impressed. I think Mark Rylance is one of the greatest actors of our generation. His performance in Jerusalem is nothing short of outstanding. The ensemble around him are also all on top form. I just didn't really warm to the play at all. I prefer something with a story rather than a random day in the life of a group of people. The play just didn't seem to go anywhere or have any particular message. I didn't really identify with any of the characters, so I thought the whole thing lacked any kind of emotion. It also need someone with a big pair of scissors to trim it all down. I think there may have been a better play in there if it had been nearer 2 hours than 3. - Steve
02 Feb 10
The acting is very good indeed. The ensemble feel was re-inforced by Mark Rylance not taking an individual bow - a very generous act as he would probably have got a standing ovation. Whilst the play is well written it dragged for me in two parts and the emphasis on all the drug use with the casual understanding that this is something everyone does when it isn't was a bit far fetched. The Amoral quality was disturbing at times and rather niave especially about the consequences but Mark Rylance was completely convincing as was Mackenzie Crook. Stunning acting all round. - hilary
20 Aug 09
Absolutely extraordinary!
The most significant play I have seen for a very long time in a superlative production. Deserves a transfer. - JJE
15 Aug 09
It's easy to see why Jerusalem has garnered so many rave reviews: Jez Butterworth's script crackles with ribald humour, the acting is superb (with the exception of poor Jessica Barden who was barely audible from the fifth row) and at the centre is a larger than life tour de force from Mark Rylance which is virtually guaranteed to haul in the awards at the end of the year. And yet it didn't completely work for me. Over thre hours long, the final act really dragged and is the permanently stoned and boozed up rural underclass really part of the green and plesant land the Royal Court intelligentsia like to pretend is still out there? Amongst a star-studded audience (Tom Stoppard, Toby Stephens and others) were most of the cast on a works outing from The Winter's Tale. That excellent production shows that three hours can pass quickly, by the end Jerusalem was staggering to a long overdue conclusion. - David Baxter
14 Aug 09
I'm not sure it's a great play, but it is a theatrical feast. There are many themes being explored in an intelligent and funny way and you're thinking about them for a long time after you've left the theatre, but it's the pace, rhythm and energy that sweeps you away. There are a lot of young inexperienced actors in this excellent ensemble who will no doubt never forget the experience of a nightly masterclass in acting from Mark Rylance, who positively inhabits this wonderfully meaty role of Shakespearean proportions. You don't see many performances like this in a lifetime yet he takes his bows in the least starry way alongside his colleagues. Wonderful. - Gareth James
11 Aug 09
I would have given 5 stars if the writer had allowed his characters, sixteen in all, to develop beyond their respective, and limited, functions within the larger thematic concerns of the play. Having said that though, I loved Mark Rylance's Rooster Byron - he gives yet another masterclass in acting and so soon after his triumph in Boeing Boeing. It's a long sit, helped by having two intervals, but worth it all the same. - rds
29 Jul 09
Ella dear you're illiterate - a pal
27 Jul 09
very enjoyable and a "tour de force" acting by mark Rylance. Book your tickets NOW! - ella
26 Jul 09
Very good but Rylance needs to concentrate on a Tuesday night more. We pay the same price as those on a Saturday.....and the comic can't act. - coral
22 Jul 09
I was completely blown away like nothing I have ever seen before.Beautiful, tragic and yet fantastically funny.Go you wont be disappointed I've already booked more tickets! - Andrea
The first theatre opened as The New Chelsea on 16 Apr 1870. Changed name to Belgravia. Re-opened as Royal Court 25 Jan 1871. Demolished in 1887. New theatre opened (current, slightly different site) 24 Sep 1888. Famous for supporting and commissioning new writing. Probably the first UK Theatre to regularly include their URL in advertising. Member of the Society of London Theatre. In 1996 the theatre closed for redevelopment, funded by the National Lottery. The refurbished theatre at Sloane Square re-opened in February 2000 including two theatres the 389 seat Jerwood Theatre Downstairs and the studio style Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.
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