Jerusalem
Jez Butterworth
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a comic, contemporary vision of life in our green and pleasant land. On St George’s Day, the morning of the local county fair, Johnny Byron, local waster and modern day Pied Piper is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his children want their dad to take them to the fair, Troy Whitworth wants to give him a serious kicking and a motley crew of mates want his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.
4.9 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Location |
West End |
| Venue |
Apollo Theatre |
| Director |
Ian Rickson |
| Cast |
Tom Brooke, Mackenzie Crook, Alan David, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Gerard Horan, Danny Kirrane, Charlotte Mills, Lucy Montgomery, Sarah Moyle, Harvey Robinson, Mark Rylance, Barry Sloane. Jessica Barden |
| From |
February 2010 |
| Until |
April 2010 |
| Box Office |
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Jerusalem is a comic, contemporary vision of life in our green and pleasant land. On St George’s Day, the morning of the local county fair, Johnny Byron, local waster and modern day Pied Piper is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his children want their dad to take them to the fair, Troy Whitworth wants to give him a serious kicking and a motley crew of mates want his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.
Book tickets to see Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre from October 8th to January 14th 2012.
Reviews
The Independent
Paul Taylor
"Rickson's cast are uniformly superb in all their cranky idiosyncracies. But Rylance is, like Johnny, in a league of his own. Aptly for a play about the layers of tradition, his performance seems to strike retrospective probes through his career to date – right down to another seditious outlaw who headed a gang of misfits: Peter Pan. You even get a smack of a cracked version of Henry V, the role with which he officially inaugurated the Globe, when our drug-fuelled hero imagines his band of brothers taking on the local council."
11/02/2010
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The Stage
Scott Matthewman
"As with last year’s staging at the Royal Court, Ultz’s set design, with its towering elm trees, battered furniture and implausibly American caravan, is another character, enriching the atmosphere of Butterworth’s glorious script. And as the comedy falls away at the close of the third act, surrendering to brutal violence and a call to awaken the country’s long forgotten forces, one is left in no doubt that this a superb piece of theatre."
11/02/2010
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Time Out
Caroline McGinn
"Director Ian Rickson also gets a lot out of the supporting cast of neglected teenage girls and drippy dropouts: Tom Brooke is a treat as wide-eyed would-be emigré Lee Piper and Mackenzie Crook slouches his way into Byron's sadsack hanger-on, Ginger. This is a production which you will find very hard to evict from your imagination."
29/07/2009
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The Times
Dominic Maxwell
"Butterworth’s script shines with self-knowing wit and compassion. Rickson’s direction is so good that you don’t notice it: Jerusalem simply looks and feels like real life, but with all the boring bits taken out. A hilarious, enchanting, affecting evening."
11/02/2010
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The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
"The production belongs to Rylance. Experience suggests he would prefer to share the credit, yet it’s his mixture of mischievous physicality and pastoral wisdom that guarantees the success of this profane, nourishing, freewheeling and frequently mesmerising piece of theatre."
11/02/2010
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The Financial Times
Ian Shuttleworth
"There is another temptation, to which I will succumb: a word often seen in enthusiastic quotations in front of theatres, but one which I cannot recall ever having used myself. This play, this production, this performance are sensational."
14/02/2010
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The Guardian
Michael Billington
"Jez Butterworth's play gains immeasurably from a second viewing. Like everyone else, I was mesmerised, on its first appearance at the Royal Court, by Mark Rylance's tremendous performance as Rooster Byron. But what I took to be a romantic nostalgia for a lost rural England, symbolised by the charismatic hero, is much more morally equivocal than I initially realised."
10/02/2010
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