Mark Rylance returns to his career-defining role in Jerusalem
(Picture: Simon Annand)Covered in blood, myth and glory, Mark Rylance returns in triumph, 13 years on, to the career-defining role of Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jez Butterworth’s dazzling exploration of Englishness. Rooster is a charismatic, anarchic spirit: a perma-drunk yarn-spinner who supplies drugs and dance music to teenagers at his woodland caravan in Wiltshire. If anything, age has deepened the grain of Rylance’s overwhelming performance. And the questions Butterworth asked about national identity back in 2009 have only become more urgent.
There’s just so much in this magnificently profligate, three-hour epic, which can shift from sublime comedy to high drama in a heartbeat. It touches on folklore and religion, community and exclusion, land and ownership, sex and the great British tradition of underage drinking. Butterworth said recently that the play is about “wanting to stay but knowing you have to leave” – in other words, life and death.
