Jerusalem

 

Jez Butterworth, writer of recent Tom Cruise vehicle Edge of Tomorrow and award-winning play Mojo, wrote Jerusalem in 2008. It went on to sell out the Royal Court for months and punters would arrive in the early hours of the morning to camp out for return tickets. It won the 2009 Evening Standard Best Play Award and toured to New York. This is about as hyped as popular new playwriting gets, and it's another piece of big programming for The Lace Market Theatre.

A modern hymnal to the free spirits of England on a mid-April day in darkest Wiltshire, the driving force behind Jerusalem is Johnny "Rooster" Byron; a Pied Piper and Falstaff for the North Wessex Downs. Rooster's Wood, where his rundown caravan takes its repose, is as old as the land, lying on lay lines from Stonehenge to Glastonbury. From this rural camp the former daredevil liberally doles out a cocktail of booze, drugs and folk tales - the legends of old Albion - to his assembled gang of outcasts. Yet on the day we meet Byron, the day of the local St George's Day fair, he faces eviction from his encampment. With a new des-res estate being built just 400 yards from the wood, time and patience are running short for the charming anarchist and revelling wild man. 

The play is The Archers on acid and is sparkling in its wit and just how funny it is. It's coarse but in a way that never feels unnecessary. It's impossible to review Jerusalem and not praise the actor playing Rooster. Andy Taylor's performance was fun and fresh - his story telling is deft and trips along, especially when he talks about meeting giants off the A429 or being abducted by four Nigerian traffic wardens. He plays both the allegorical story of Rooster the man and Rooster the emblem of England well too, from the man who once leapt rows of double-deckers on a motorbike to the king of a now dwindled empire - a ramshackle caravan in the woods where his supposed friends film him on their phones, drunk and soaked in his own piss. No man is an island, but Taylor's Rooster comes to resemble one.

Others that deserve a mention are Tom Orton's stomping and spaced-out Ginger and the enjoyably loutish Davey, played by Chris Reed. The real standout however, beyond Rooster, is Richard Fife as the Professor. A senile academic looking for his lost dog and unwittingly tripping on LSD, his quotations and poetic ramblings draw into focus how  many of the iPhone generation dismiss these rural idylls - as something for the pages of the library, along with the Venerable Bede. In contrast, Hugh Jenkins' plodding Wesley could do with better pacing in his lines and delivery, but does pull off his Morris dancing with aplomb.   

 

A huge part of the production though is the design. The set, created by Mark James, is visually stunning and includes an actual caravan and trees plus all of Rooster's collected detritus. The most is made of this brilliant design with  by being well lit too by Hugh Philip. Technically-speaking, this is the most accomplished the Lace Market Theatre has been,  with the sound design also adding to the whole feel. 

The other star is Butterworth's script, and the gentle poetry of the title is not lost in the writing. The play truly is a "walk upon England's mountains green". The literary allusions run deep. England, a great nation of writers, is a palette that Butterworth draws from and there are nods not only to Blake but to other Romantics, to John Clare and of course to Shakespeare, St George's Day being the birthday of the bard. Even Rooster's surname, Bryon, is that of our Newstead poet. It's an historically rich piece: Rooster's antecedents are the Levellers, Diggers, Luddites and Swing rioters, our own Robin Hood, and Arthur Seaton. When Rooster gives advice to his nine year old son, saying: "School is a lie. Prison's a waste of time. Girls are wondrous. Grab your fill... Don't listen to no one and nothing but what your own heart bids. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Fight to the death. Don't give up. Show me your teeth," you can't help but hear Sillitoe too.  

Jerusalem is fantastic piece of theatre and boldly produced by The Lace Market Theatre. It's the anti-Little Englander that rails against Blake's "dark satanic mills". It throws together so much of our collective culture from bacon sandwiches and tea hangover cures to the cucumber sandwich brigade, from Morris dancing to Girls Aloud, and the hedonism of raves in the wood and getting pissed up at the local fair. As an example of modern life in our "green and pleasant Land" there's few better (save maybe a copy of LeftLion) and for a cracking community production you'd be hard pressed to find better too. For an evening of "this sceptred isle … this England" in Nottingham this week, it's worth getting to the Lace Market.