Jerusalem

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.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 11 February 2010

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 ...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 12 January 2012:

When I originally saw Jerusalem at the Royal Court I was not quite caught up in the 5-star hysteria, apart from marvelling at Mark Rylance's extraordinary performance. Possibly I had heard too much about what it is really like to have something like Dale Farm on your doorstep to find Jez Butterworth's tale of drinking, drugs and criminality romantic or heroic. However, given the astonishing success of the play in the West End, New York and now back for a final fling at the Apollo it seemed sensible to re-evaluate what many people regard as the greatest play of the century so far. On a second viewing it is possibly not as funny as on first acquaintance but I was struck by a sense of sadness hanging over the sad and wasted lives of almost every character. A substantial proportion of the cast are still in place after more than two years, but there is a substantial improvement in the current Pea, although the actors playing Lee and especially Wesley are not a patch on the originals. Rylance is still a force of nature but this is a more subdued Rooster Byron, aware of his declining faculties and his lack of a place in a changing world. Jerusalem is undoubtedly a remarkable play, even if only for the success it has achieved, but mainly because of the larger than life character of Rooster Byron which Butterworth and Rylance have created....

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