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
16 July 2009
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.
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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.
To: 15 August, Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, Chelsea, SW1W 8EG, 020 7565 5000
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