At the end of Jerusalem I
caught Mark Rylance’s face:
bloodied, unbowed, dazed by
the effort. For three hours the
62-year-old actor focused his
all on playing Johnny
“Rooster” Byron, Wiltshire
cockerel, drug dealer, Pied
Piper and scorner of rules.
In modern drama there is no
greater embodiment of
English liberty. Told to shift
his caravan from a wood
outside an expanding village,
Rooster refuses. Residents of
a new housing estate have
signed a petition. Officialdom,
with its high-viz tabards and
eviction notices, thinks it can
finally uproot and tame him.
Rooster stands his ground.
Mark Rylance evokes English liberty in all its complicated glory
Is Green feel pedestrian. This
1938 Emlyn Williams play is
part Pitmen Painters, part
Pygmalion. A Welsh orphan
in the early 1900s is rescued
from coalmining by a rich
suffragette who founds a
school. Iwan Davies is likeable
as the lad. There is fine Welsh
male-voice singing. It is all
perfectly watchable, if slow.
Nicola Walker bustles about as
the schoolmarm but imbues
her with a too-modern air.
Edwardian philanthropists
were surely less self-admiring.
Williams’s play is a welcome
reminder that books matterand that merit counts for more
than background. Not that the
finger-waggers who control the
National really believe that. In
the interval, wandering round
the theatre’s bookshop, you
are assailed by mounds of
right-on polemical titles
about race and climate and
transgenderism and various
other isms that pollute our art.
The unanimity of the message
is hateful. It makes our national
theatre feel alien to anyone
who does not comply to these
commissars’ hectoring views.
Rooster Byron would ignore
them and so should we. cFor theatre tickets, visit
thetimes.co.uk/ticketsQUENTIN
LETTS
Jerusalem
Apollo Theatre, London W1
HHHHH
The Corn Is Green
National Theatre (Lyttelton),
London SE1
HHH
Rise up! Jerusalem returns,
with Mark Rylance, centreFor ever England
Jez Butterworth’s 2009
play, revived with much of
its original cast, has barely
dated. In fact it feels more
necessary now than a decade
ago. Jerusalem, then, could be
seen as an omen of the Brexit
revolution. What does it say
now, after lockdown and the
illiberal onslaught of masks
and social distancing? The
play ends with Rooster issuing
a gizzard-shrivelling curse.
“Rise up!” he cries, beating a
mystical drum. “Come... you
drunken spirits, you fields of
ghosts who walk these green
plains still! Come, you giants!”
The last thing we hear is a
distant thumping, as if of
mighty feet. Fee-fi-fo-fum.
Any superlatives are
inadequate for Rylance. His
commitment to the part is
total. Is Rooster maybe a
touch more lame than 13 years
ago? Aren’t we all? The water
butt into which he dived in
the opening scene has
been replaced by a
trough. Otherwise
this remains a
bruising marathon.
Ian Rickson’s
production again
gives us a detailed
glade, the caravanalmost an organic part of the
forest. Live hens peck the soil.
You can practically smell the
wild garlic. Come to the West
Country at this time of year
and savour it. You may also
smell an indifference to
fashion and prohibition, a
stolid refusal to be bossed
about by 21st-century
puritanism. One reason
Jerusalem was and remains
so remarkable is that it is so
different from the boring
compliance of most other new
drama. Theatre practitioners
no longer regard themselves
as rebels or revellers. They
have become enforcers. They
are actually proud of this.
The plot concerns the
village May fair and the
disappearance of a teenager.
Mackenzie Crook, voice lower
than it was, is Rooster’s perfect
sidekick, the drug-fried Ginger.
Alan David’s Professor shows
that civil disobedience is not a
class thing. Rooster is given
a fairground goldfish in
a plastic bag. Its fate
awaits us all unless
we join Rooster’s
“numberless”
batallion.
All of which makes
a revival of The CornTHE
CRITICSSIMON ANNAND1 May 2022 13