The Guardian - UK (2022-04-30)

Saturday 30 April 2022 The Guardian •

National^23

 Mark Rylance

is brilliant

as Rooster

(centre) in Jez

Butterworth’s

complicated and

layered play

PHOTOGRAPH:

SIMON ANNAND

Jerusalem

Apollo theatre, London

★★★★☆

Arifa Akbar

F

ull disclosure: I did

not love Jerusalem

the fi rst time around.

Jez Butterworth’s

play about myths and

Englishness has itself

been so mythologised since that

original 2009 run – hailed as the

play of the century and celebrated

for its Shakespearean qualities –

that it seems like heresy to speak of

ambivalence in anything other than

a whisper.

Butterworth’s language contains

great riches and Johnny “Rooster”

Byron, the play’s outsider,

antihero, rebel and messiah rolled

into one, is a blazing creation. But

what about the peculiarly fl at,

Little Britain-style humour of the

fi rst act? The peripheral female

characters and queasy pejoratives

of women? And its hark ing back to

a bygone England – a “holy land”

fi lled with ancient energies, druids

and Stonehenge giants, carrying

with it the discomforting idea that

Englishness was a better, purer

version of itself then?

masses would not have been as

shocked by Vote Leave.

First staged two years after

the demise of Blair’s Britain, its

references to Sex and the City,

Bin Laden, and the Spice Girls

sound dated. Its language predates

#MeToo and Black Lives Matter –

and it shows. There is a limp joke

about dressing up in a burqa and

references to women as “slappers”,

“bitches” and fat wives.

But the tone of this production

is not set in the fi rst, peculiar act,

and it is not the sum total of its

anachronisms, either. Although the

bigger ideological issues continue

to run through the three acts, this

is a complicated and layered play,

growing into its magnifi cence.

From the second act onwards, it

expands into an ever more tense,

mysterious and majestic drama,

enormous in its sense of tragedy.

Much of this is down to Rylance’s

epic performance, as physical as

it is psychologically profound.

If Rooster starts out as a brute,

Rylance captures the wreckage of

that man immaculately, from his

gait to hangover headache and

come down of darting eyeballs.

The play takes place on St

George’s Day, at the woodland spot

being illegally occupied by Rooster

as he is about to be evicted, though

he continues to launch his protest

against the council and the new

housing development nearby. He

is both a heroic anti-establishment

rebel and one of society’s losers.

The play’s ideas around myth

and identity are lyrical but do not

fully cohere. Ultz ’s astonishing set

opens up to bacchanalian detritus

outside Rooster’s caravan – empty

bottles, a mucky sofa, a disco-ball

tied to a tree, even live chickens.

But it is uncomfortable to see the

St George’s Cross emblazoned on

the curtain at the start and a fl ag at

the back of the caravan. That fl ag

has, since Jerusalem’s fi rst staging ,

become ever more associated with

the far right, and the play’s dewy-

eyed ideas around Englishness

carry a queasy proximity to the

romanticised narrative that has

been co-opted by the right wing.

But any disagreement around

the treatment of its themes cannot

take away from its drama and the

soaring central performance. Is

it the greatest play of our times?

Not in my view. But Rylance’s

Rooster is surely the greatest

performance of the century.

Journal Charlotte Higgins Page 5

Moths declining faster in British

woods than farmland or cities

Patrick Barkham

Moths have declined faster in British

woods over the last half century than

on farmland or in cities despite wood-

lands having increased and moths

being shielded from chemical and

light pollution by the trees.

Forest populations of moths

halved between 1968 and 2016 com-

pared with average national losses of

a third, according to a study. Moths

are a well-studied indicator of wider

insect declines that research has

often linked to pesticide use , habitat

loss and urban light pollution – none

of which directly aff ect woodlands.

Species experiencing drastic

declines include the brindled beauty

(-78%), the canary-shouldered thorn

(-68%) and the scalloped oak (-69%).

The loss of moths from woodland

may be partly because of climate

change or less woodland manage-

ment, such as coppicing, leading to

more shading or increased deer den-

sity causing more intensive grazing.

However, the team of scientists

found moths whose caterpillars

fed on shade-intolerant plants and

woodland fl owers grazed by deer did

not decline any more than species

relying on unaff ected grasses.

Dr Dan Blumgart from Rothamsted

Research , the lead author of the study

in Insect Conservation and Diver-

sity, said: “Climate change is known

to have contributed to the national

decline in moths and it is likely that

this has driven at least part of the

decline observed in woodlands.

“But this can’t explain why the

declines have been worse in broad-

leaf woodland compared to other

habitats. We might expect the shade

provided by woodlands to help buff er

against the eff ects of climate change

but that is clearly not the case.”

Based on data from the Rothamsted

Theatre review Rylance gives

performance of the century in

fl awed but magnifi cent fantasy

As it brings back some of

the players from the original

production, including Ian Rickson

as director and Mark Rylance as

Rooster , this revival brings back

some of the same gripes too. Its

motley crew of “outcasts, leeches,

undesirables [and] beggars” who

meet around Rooster’s caravan to

drink and snort coke still look like

comic grotesques in its fi rst act.

Now , we wonder if they are

Brexiters and populists in the

making. “I leave Wiltshire and

my ears pop,” says one character

who does not see the point of

other countries. Maybe if this play

had been revived before the EU

referendum , the metropolitan

Insect Survey , which counted more

than 8m moths from more than 400

larger species , the study examined

four indicators of moth population

health in woodland and six other hab-

itats between 1968 and 2016.

Broadleaf woodland was the only

habitat in which all four measures

declined severely with abundance

down 51%, biomass down 52%, spe-

cies richness down 14% and species

diversity down 15%, compared with

smaller nationwide declines in abun-

dance (34%) and biomass (39%) with

richness unchanged and diversity

increasing by 10%.

There were greater losses from

woodlands in the south of Britain

than the north, the study found.

‘Creativity crisis’

Star blasts arts cuts

Mark Rylance has used his actor

biography in the programme for

the new West End run of Jerusalem

to criticise cuts to arts education.

“If, in modern day England, an

institution like Eton deems drama

important enough to have two

theatres, why are we allowing our

government to cut arts education

from the life of the rest of our

young people and our hard-pressed

teachers ?” he writes, in a biography

that highlights his teacher

parents’ devotion to amateur

dramatics. About 20 productions

are staged in a typical year at

Eton college, which has its own

resident designer, theatre director

and fi lm-maker. The school’s

former pupils include the actors

Eddie Redmayne , Damian Lewis ,

Dominic West and Tom Hiddleston.

Last year leading fi gures in the arts

criticised the funding cuts made to

creative arts subjects at universities

and Labour warned that schools in

England face d a “creativity crisis ”.

Chris Wiegand

The motley

crew who

meet around

Rooster’s

caravan

still look

like comic

grotesques in

the fi rst act

Moth numbers in forests

halved from 1968 to 2016