JERUSALEM Review - West End Whingers etc

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Posted: 3/29/11 at 10:46pm

West End Whingers
Review: Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court
Wednesday 15 July 2009

We had been tipped off by some Good Samaritans beforehand that Jez Butterworth’s play comes in at a staggering 3 hours 20 minutes with two intervals. Christ! We could have flown to the holy city in less time. To be honest the runes were not looking auspicious and the Whingers were on their knees praying to the God of theatre (why has he foresaken us?) to intervene with some technical problem which would necessitate the whole thing being called off and refunds given.

And do you know what? Never have 200 minutes flown by so fast, so enjoyably and accompanied by such gales of laughter.
Mark Rylance plays Johnny Byron – a hard-drinking part-Scheherazade, part-Pied Piper, part opinionated wastrel and part all-round scumbag who deals drugs to minors. But he does it all with limitless charm, a De Niro twinkle and a performance as hilarious as the one which won the Whingers’ hearts in Boeing Boeing.

He lives in a (too flash really) Airstream caravan in a wood (the set by Ultz features real trees – The Whingers do hope they were sustainable) near a small town in Wiltshire where – despite his status as a haven for the local teenagers and a lover of many of the local women – it appears that his time is running out. A petition against him has been signed by thousands and the local council has used its powers to call in the police to get him evicted. Significantly to Mr Butterworth’s slice of English life it’s St George’s Day and the day of the local annual fete which gets crapper every year.

Now interestingly enough Wiltshire is Phil’s county of birth and indeed he has his own tales to tell of each of the many places name-checked in the play although nobody listens.
But more importantly to the world of comedy Wiltshire is blessed with an accent which seems to be funny whatever you say in it (Sadly Phil lost his. Or sold it. Or something.).

It also features a discussion about the decline of BBC Points West (the local news programme Phil grew with), scenes of cocaine being cut with Trivial Pursuit cards (the game hadn’t even been invented in Phil’s youth) and tests Mark Rylance and cast against that old chestnut of never working with children or animals by including a goldfish, a urinating tortoise, some chickens and a small boy (we think we saw Lenny Harvey who looked about 6 but could possibly be 11 like his role share Lewis Coppen).

Real choc ices are consumed, Rylance dunks his head in a water trough and shakes his wet hair over those in the Row A and an axe is wielded menacingly close to these bloggers (was Butterworth tipped off that the Whingers would be seated in the front row?).
On the debit side it features morris dancing.

For two of the three acts the mode is almost all relentless comedy and director Professor Ian Rickson draws shining performances from the entire and not inconsiderable ensemble which notably includes The Office graduate Mackenzie Crook (in fact, wasn’t Gareth Keenan from Wiltshire too? Swindon?). We particularly enjoyed Tom Brooke who, we note, had the misfortune to be in The Boat That Rocked and so deserves to be singled out for praise: he was wonderful as the hapless would-be emigree Lee Piper. Alan David is priceless as the vague Professor.

When the comedy stops and the violence begins it’s a bit of a shock and we have to confess that we didn’t really know what it was all about. Butterworth’s teasing juxtaposition of the mystic and the mundane (Stonehenge and custard creams) is all very well but when we were just left with the mystic the Whingers were way out of their depth.

Butterworth is a pig farmer in Somerset apparently, which may be a clue; perhaps it’s even more state-of-the-nation than it claims. Phil headed straight home to phone NHS Direct and begged for Tamiflu. But really we have no idea what it was all about.
And we didn’t much care that we didn’t understand it. To be honest, we would probably go and sit through all three hours 20 minutes of it again.



thelondonpaper

Review of Jerusalem, Royal Court Theatre
Mackenzie Crook and Mark Rylance lead a top-notch cast in Jez Butterworth's excellent new play at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square
by: Ben Dowell

Jerusalem: Mackenzie Crook walks upon England's mountains green
Rating: 5/5

AH, rural England - its pleasant pastures, rolling hills... drug-dealing wasters and identikit housing estates.

Jez Butterworth's startlingly brilliant new play is a tragic and hilarious vision of life in an English country community.

It’s St George's Day and Johnny 'Rooster' Byron is the familiar rural rogue, a charismatic gypsy drunkard (a tremendous Mark Rylance) who charms bored youth with his drugs and tall tales. Except now he's faced with eviction from his woodland home and someone's after him with threats of a kicking.

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.

What’s On Stage
Jerusalem
Venue: Royal Court - Jerwood Theatre
Where: West End
Date Reviewed: 16 July 2009

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.

Jerusalem, at the Royal Court Theatre - review
Charismatic Mark Rylance seems endowed with mystic powers in this continuously gripping production. Rating: * * * *
By Charles Spencer

Over the years the Royal Court has often concentrated on desperate lives in gritty urban environments, offering plays packed with fear, loathing, sex, violence and degradation.
So Jez Butterworth's new drama initially seems like a welcome blast of bracing fresh air. It's St Georges Day, the action is set in an ancient wood in deepest Wiltshire, birds are chirping, and a girl dressed as a fairy sings Jerusalem.

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 moods keep shifting, and right to the end you are never quite sure whether you are watching a rambunctious comedy or a terrible tragedy in the making.

Rylance plays Johnny "Rooster" Byron, a Romany ne'er-do-well who for years has lived in a mobile home in the wood.

Once, he was a motorcycle stunt rider; now, he has become a tattooed Pied Piper, attracting local children who come to him to score drugs, drink and dance at wild parties.

But the local authority is threatening him with eviction, and a local girl has gone missing. Is Rooster a basically benevolent old rogue, as he appears, or something far more sinister?

Butterworth and Rylance keep us guessing to the end. For much of the evening Rylance is wonderfully funny, never more so than when, heavily hung-over, he prepares a breakfast of stale milk, a raw egg, several shots of vodka and a wrap of speed and somehow gets it down in one.

And his relations with the locals – most notably Mackenzie Crook as a sad and creepy hanger-on; Tom Brooke as a delightfully gormless child heading for Australia; and Alan David as an elderly local eccentric – are full of laugh-out-loud humour.
But 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.
Jerusalem Broadway Trailer