Gossip

Could Mark Rylance return as Rooster?

| London's West End |

17 January 2012

His Airstream caravan Waterloo may have only just pulled out of the West End’s Apollo Theatre, but if you were one of the many theatregoers who didn’t manage to catch Mark Rylance as Johnny “Rooster” Byron fear not – Rylance has said he might consider returning to the role, but not for five to 10 years.

Speaking to the Guardian Rylance said would want to give his Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics Circle Awards and Tony Award-winning performance “a period of rest” and then “if the play still inspires production and they still want me, I’d be thrilled to play it again with five or six years of life experience.”

Jez Butterworth‘s acclaimed played finished its second sell-out run at the Apollo on 14 January 2012 having debuted at the Royal Court in Summer 2009 and transferred to the West End venue in Spring 2010. The show subsequently transferred to Broadway, returning to London on 17 October 2011 (previews from 8 October).

The show’s final performances saw fans queue on Shaftesbury Avenue for almost 24 hours in order to secure a limited number of day tickets with Time Out dubbing the campers ‘Occupy Jerusalem’.