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.

ENDGAME

29/10/09, Duchess Theatre

Written by Penelope
Samuel Beckett doesn't do joy. He's not big on hope. He's not into fun. But he's a master at bleak humour, at malevolent co-dependence and at observation of the petty details of the human condition. It's a challenging evening for an optimist. Yet somehow his plays make people laugh.

Endgame is a play about endings. Hamm (Mark Rylance) is stuck in a chair, unable to see and walk. Clov (Simon McBurney) is his 'carer'. Living in a pair of metal bins to the right of the stage are Hamm's parents, Nell and Nagg (Miriam Margolyes and Tom Hickey). What we witness is the relationship between these two 'couples'. Watching Nell and Nagg is a bit like seeing your grandparents in their old age - lots of 'do you remember whens' and stories that no longer make sense, or have been told so often that you no longer see the point in listening. These parts are tenderly and beautifully acted. Given that both actors are confined to bins for the duration of the play, that's quite an achievement. Nell dies, very quietly, while the lid is down on the bin and watching Nagg's grief as he realises she won't be coming up again is remarkably moving.

Anyone who's ever read Beckett, as well as seeing the plays, will know that his stage directions are very precise. He proscribes the movements and scenery in enormous details. So the movements of the actors, and the props are very deliberate. As Clov enters the stage at the very beginning of the play, he wrestles with a set of ladders so he can view what's going on in the outside world from the high windows of their basement room. Here is Chaplinesque movement and humour, it seems every time Clov gets to the top, he realises he's forgotten something. You can see the jokes a mile off, but somehow they still make you chuckle. McBurney's portrayal of Clov is endearing. Here is a man trying to do his duty, while feeling trapped, bewildered and losing hope. He can see beyond his restricted little the world but doesn't quite get there. McBurney uses Beckett's language perfectly and imbues each line with feeling and meaning.

The only problem of the production, for me, is Mark Rylance as Hamm. Clearly, he's a talented actor. But somehow the pitch of this doesn't quite work. He delivers the lines but they don't hit the right note. It's altogether rather too manic. 24 hours after seeing the play, I don't remember anything he did or said. But the words and actions of the other three still echo in my head.

My companion for Endgame was a student at Trinity College, Dublin in the 1950's and went to see Beckett receive an honorary degree there in 1959. We puzzled over the play and its meaning afterwards. As an optimist, I was looking for a message of hope (I found several in Waiting for Godot earlier this year). At the end the play, Clov makes the decision to leave Hamm and Nagg and go into the outside world. He's breaking free. He can no longer bear to be imprisoned in the basement serving other people. This, said my companion, is the one moment of hope in the play. I'm not sure what Samuel Beckett would have made of us searching for a positive message in Endgame, but knowing Clov could escape helped me to enjoy it all the more.

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