JERUSALEM

3/3/10, Apollo Shaftesbury Avenue

An absolute barn-stormer of a performance by Mark Rylance as Johnny "Rooster" Byron, gypsy, former motorcycle daredevil, storyteller, drug dealer, Lord of Misrule and mesmeric figure. D claimed she recognised at least half a dozen actors in the audience, no doubt there to pay homage. Rylance deserves a knighthood.

D saw it before when it debuted at the Royal Court. I had to miss it. This time we went with G and J and sat three rows back, from where Rylance was overwhelming.

The set is Byron's ageing Airstream caravan, surrounded by battered furniture and assorted junk, in a Wiltshire wood 400 yards across the fields from a new housing estate. It's the day of the annual village fair. We see the local authority officials who have come to evict Byron, the teenagers (and ex-teenagers -- a touching performance by Mackenzie Crook) who congregate at Rooster's to do drink and drugs, party wildly and generally misbehave and grow up, and assorted townsfolk including the landlord of a local pub, dressed for Morris dancing, a vicious young man called Troy who is himself a graduate of Rooster's academy and now stepfather to the 15-year old Phaedra, May Queen, who has gone missing, and Rooster's ex, Dawn, with their little boy.

And there is Rooster. We seem him emerge from the caravan after a heavy night. His face is rigid. His leg is rigid. He upends himself head first into a water trough and then drinks a pint of milk with a raw egg and alka seltzer. He holds himself stiffly throughout: the stiffness of the cripple and of the drunk, though his mind seems far too quick for a drunk's. He has enormous muscles, tattoos, a dark unshaven face, and a pitch-perfect Wiltshire accent. He is (sometimes literally) hypnotic -- we're asked to believe that he can reduce people to trembling helplessness just by staring into their eyes, and we see him do it with Dawn and Troy. He knows all the answers in Trivial Pursuit. One of the high points comes when he tells a story about meeting the giant who built Stonehenge: at its culmination Rooster (as the giant) draws himself up to his full height and bends down to tickle a Zippo lighter (as Rooster) under the chin. Brilliant.

The mixing of the mythic and the modern reminded my of Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns. I'm not sure it entirely works here. Jez Butterworth is clearly interested in the way the mundane and the magical intersect, and there was some of that in Parlour Song with Toby Jones, which we saw at the Almeida last year (and which is set on a new housing estate like the off-stage one in Jerusalem). There are lots of references to annual rituals, some meaningful (the 15-year old Phaedra is the May queen, complete with fairy wings, and transformed by the experience: she comes on at the start of each act and sings a song, Blake's Jerusalem at the very beginning), some mocked (Morris dancing).

The first act is very funny. Parts of the second and third are funny too. There's a big laugh for a routine in which some of the kids device a complicated scheme for lending, relending and eventually repaying a fiver with which to buy some "whizz", ending with Rooster's observation: "That's what got this country into such a mess in the first place." There's another big laugh towards the end when one of the council officials is reading out the list of names on the petition to evict Rooster, to some of which Rooster appends explanatory (and dismissive) observations, until to one name he simply says: "Jack X is a cunt". Now why is that so funny? (The language is terrible throughout: loads of C-words and F-words. I wonder what G and J thought?)

But the tone darkens as the play goes on, and the price of Rooster's devil-may-care approach to life becomes clearer. He is a lonely man who cannot form conventional relationships. Troy suspects him of having it away with the 15-year old Phaedra; he probably hasn't, because he has an appreciation of innocence which perhaps comes from being an innocent in some ways himself, but you can't rule it out. He is badly beaten up by Troy's heavies. Apparently his young son is watching because when the boy comes on shortly afterwards Rooster gives him some advice, which culminates in the observation: "Girls are wondrous. No man ever went to his barrow wishing he'd had less sex."

Structurally it's a bit baggy. There's a large cast, some of whom don't appear until after the interval (a sign, I sometimes think, of a playwright who doesn't quite know where he's going). But it's a fine script, a brilliantly-written part, well-directed by Ian Rickson and just brilliantly performed by Rylance.

JERUSALEM

15/7/09, Royal Court

New Jez Butterworth play with Mark Rylance. Missed it: was in Bulgaria. D said it was a cracker. The reviews (which I read on the plane back) agreed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jul/16/jerusalem-review

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6715697.ece

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1200217/Thank-God-Wild-West--Wiltshire.html

PARLOUR SONG

10/04/09, Almeida

1hr 40mins approx, no interval. A last minute booking for Good Friday. Toby Jones in Jez Butterworth's latest, with Andrew Lincoln and Amanda Drew. Well reviewed.

We liked it. Butterworth owes a lot to Pinter (though, as S said, he is kinder to his characters). There's the same air of unspoken menace; the same exchanges between characters that never quite connect; the same exaggerated fascination with the mannerisms of ordinary speech.

Ned is a demolition expert living in a new housing estate with a view of the motorway. Dale, with his shorts, gold chain and unbuttoned check shirt, is his neighbour, who made his money from a chain of carwashes employing 40 Kosovans. Joy is Ned's sexually frustrated wife.

It was full of nice ideas. Ned and wife play "sexy Scrabble" ("If you can spell it you can have it... I once scored 45 for 'blow-job' on a triple word score"). Ned is a hoarder whose things keep disappearing, despite his best endeavours: he's put a padlock on the garden shed but someone's chiselled it off, cutting themselves in the process... his wife's stuff is still there but the lawnmower's gone. He tells this to his wife who has a plaster on her finger because she claims she cut herself slicing six dozen lemons for lemonade.

Ned seems to know his troubles, imagined or real, reflect the fact that his marriage is in trouble, but seems unable to discuss it with Joy. His responses are indirect. He tries to get fit (cue very funny mime with barbells and weights). He listens to a tape of advice on sexual technique (cue another very funny mime trying to follow the instructions for oral sex). Jones is a brilliant clown and carries this off brilliantly, but they seem to belong to another play, not the slightly surreal, skewed world reflected in most of the dialogue.

Amanda Drew powerfully sexy as the wife, who seduces an uncertain Dale; Andrew Lincoln roguishly engaging as the neighbour, who narrates.

The set a flat translucent back wall, onto which images are projected (note: every play we've seen lately seems to come with video projections; very good they are too and, as A said afterwards, cheap). The wall revolves to reveal two segments behind. Just before each revolve the set behind the wall lights up to show a bed or a sofa.

At the end Ned appears to smother Joy in bed behind the wall (though there seemed to be more than one ending, with Joy appearing on stage immediately after her "murder", leaving me rather muddled as to how much of this was dream/nightmare/fantasy and how much "real").

Afterwards in the bar, where we repaired to discuss tickets for the Edinburgh Festival, there was a Pinteresque moment of confusion. D thought the man at the next table was an actor, George Layton, who used to be in Doctor in the House. Toby Jones was talking to him. As we were leaving Layton recognised me. We established who I was. Then he introduced himself. I left, but behind me A was telling Toby Jones how much she'd enjoyed the show. D asked Jones if the man was Layton. Jones said "No". But it was: I've checked his website.