4 STARS, May 14-20. It's a polished performance by the Teddington Theatre Company of Jez Butterworth's multiple award-winning, instant classic, Jerusalem, says Richard Davies
It goes without saying that Mark Rylance is a hard act to follow as Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jez Butterworth’s acclaimed play Jerusalem. First performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 2009, it has been widely hailed as the best British play so far this century. So it’s a brave choice for an amateur dramatics company based in Hampton to attempt this production.
My heart sank slightly when I read the programme notes, suggesting that the play has something to say about “Brexit Britain”. (How I long for a Director’s note insisting that a play has no political relevance and nothing of importance to say about our times.) Yet beneath the vulgar language and “simulated drug usage” (please take note, this is not a play to take your Great Aunty Edna for her birthday treat), the play does have some very profound messages.
Although Jersualem – which refers to William Blake’s anthemic poem - certainly does address English identity, for me the play is more about the conflict between the forces of order and disorder, between the bohemian and the bourgeois, the roundheads and the cavaliers. Which side are you on? Most of us trot along somewhere in the middle, occasionally attracted to one extreme or the other – when we want to “let our hair down” at a weekend music festival, or when we feel repulsed by someone else’s antisocial behaviour.
Johnny “Rooster” Byron lives at the extreme end of the wild side of life. He is a shaman, or Puck from Midsummer Night’s Dream, living in the English woods, surrounded by his strange band of followers who come to drink, smoke, sniff, snort, dance, cavort and frolic by his side. They also listen to his magical, self-aggrandising myths of encounters with giants, incredible motorcycle stunts and tales of his immaculate conception in two separate post codes thanks to a bullet that travelled through his father’s scrotum. He claims to have Romany blood, but is really no traveller, preferring to live in the Wiltshire countryside. Depending upon your point of view, he is either a libertarian free spirit or a dangerous drug dealer who consorts with minors.
But time is running out for Rooster. The Council plans to evict him from his caravan to make way for a green belt housing development. They present him with a petition signed by nearly every resident in the town, including all the housewives he has seduced and the husbands who owe him money for drug debts. Meanwhile an angry father believes that Rooster is responsible for the disappearance of his 15 year old daughter, who is also the reigning Flintock May Queen, Paedra.
Steve Webb as Rooster is inevitably the star of the show. Bare-chested and tattooed, he is completely convincing as the “Gypsy King”, tottering around as if on stilts with his multiple motorcycling injuries. I was particularly touched by the scenes when he is confronted by Dawn, the mother of his child, wonderfully played by Dionne King and the tenderness of his clumsy attempts to address his six year old child.
Amongst Rooster’s followers, Marc Batten is hilarious as Ginger, his self-deluded and cowardly sidekick, while I was particularly impressed by Arran Southern’s under-stated performance of Lee, who is sensibly leaving for Australia. John Bellamy is highly comical as the elderly Professor, an English folk rites enthusiast who seems to have stumbled on set from another play; his description of his unwitting acid trip is a delight. Steve Taylor was also excellent as the Morris dancing Wesley, the landlord of the local pub who fails to see his own hypocrisy in begging Rooster for drugs one minute and banning him from his pub for bad behaviour the next.
In summary, I think the Teddington Theatre Company should be commended for their ambition. Overall, they make a pretty good fist of the play – or should that be a two-finger salute? Finally, Mart Stonelake and Alan Corbett deserve special mention for the brilliant set.
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