Jez Butterworth’s 2009 play Jerusalem is one of the most exciting events I’ve experienced in over three decades of writing about theatre – an instant modern classic, a galvanising exploration of Englishness, and now a political football in the culture wars. With the role of drug-dealer, daredevil, braggart and shagger Johnny “Rooster” Byron tailored to fit an on-fire Mark Rylance, it burst yowling onto the Royal Court stage, went to the West End and Broadway and won every award going (almost: it lost the Tony for Best Play to War Horse).
Hilariously funny and brilliantly anarchic, with Rooster a Lord of Misrule in the Falstaff mode to the teenage attendees at his illegal caravan parties, it also carried a dark undercurrent of sexual threat and a potent, sometimes chilling mysticism. Rooster is often described – pejoratively by those who despise him – as a ‘gypsy’ in the script, and claims for himself ancient blood and ancient rights to the land and its mysteries. Like Shakespeare’s Owen Glendower, he says he can summon giants; watching in 2009, I believed him.
