It was the play that had critics searching for superlatives and audiences queueing out of the door. When Jerusalem opened at London’s Royal Court in 2009, it developed a near-mythical reputation almost instantly. And when it transferred to the West End and then on to Broadway, the legend was complete. Shaggy, rambunctiously comic and centred on Mark Rylance’s outsized performance as Johnny “Rooster” Byron, a Falstaffian ruffian dispensing drugs and tall tales to teenagers in the West Country woods, Jerusalem was a state-of-the-nation play in the strangest sense. It sets up a contemporary England half-drunk on history, where even Rooster’s hangers-on expect giants to rise up near the A14 – and not just because they’ve popped too many pills. Could any of this be real? Some even declared it “the play of the century”. To mark its return to the West End, six playwrights consider its power and legacy – and ask whether its titanic reputation still stands.
