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    Jerusalem (NHB Modern Plays)
    Unavailable
    Jerusalem (NHB Modern Plays)
    Unavailable
    Jerusalem (NHB Modern Plays)
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Jerusalem (NHB Modern Plays)

    By Jez Butterworth

    5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A comic, contemporary vision of life in England's green and pleasant land. Winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Play, and the Critics Circle and Whatsonstage.com Awards for Best New Play.

    On St George's Day, the morning of the local country fair, Johnny 'Rooster' Byron, local waster and Lord of Misrule, is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants to be taken to the fair, a vengeful father wants to give him a serious kicking, and a motley crew of mates wants his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.

    Jerusalem premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2009, directed by Ian Rickson and starring Mark Rylance in an astonishing performance as Johnny Byron. It transferred to the West End in 2010.

    'Unarguably one of the best dramas of the twenty-first century' Guardian

    'Tender, touching, and blessed with both a ribald humour and a haunting sense of the mystery of things... one of the must-see events of the summer' Telegraph

    'Jez Butterworth's gorgeous, expansive new play keeps coming at its audience in unpredictable gusts, rolling from comic to furious, from winsome to bawdy' Observer

    'Storming... restores one's faith in the power of theatre' Independent

    'Show of the year' Time Out

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNick Hern Books
    Release dateApr 15, 2012
    ISBN9781780010151
    Unavailable
    Jerusalem (NHB Modern Plays)
    Author

    Jez Butterworth

    Jez Butterworth is one of the UK's leading playwrights. His plays include: Mojo (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1995; West End, 2013); The Night Heron (Royal Court, 2002); The Winterling (Royal Court, 2006); Parlour Song (Atlantic Theater, New York, 2008; Almeida Theatre, London, 2009); Jerusalem (Royal Court, 2009; West End, 2010; New York, 2011); The River (Royal Court, 2012); The Ferryman (Royal Court and West End, 2017) and The Hills of California (West End, 2024). Mojo won the George Devine Award, the Olivier Award for Best Comedy and the Writers' Guild, Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards for Most Promising Playwright. Jerusalem won the Best Play Award at the Critics' Circle, Evening Standard and WhatsOnStage.com Awards, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. The Ferryman won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play, and the Critics' Circle, Olivier and WhatsOnStage Awards for Best New Play, as well as the 2019 Tony Award for Best Play. His screenwriting credits include Fair Game (2010), Get On Up (2014), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Black Mass (2015), Spectre (2015), Ford v Ferrari (2019), and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). For TV, he created and wrote the comedy series Mammals for Amazon Studios, and created the historical fantasy drama Britannia for Sky and Amazon Prime. In 2007, he won the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2019 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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    Reviews for Jerusalem (NHB Modern Plays)

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    • 5/5
      Jerusalem is about many things, from the hard partying gang that hangs about Rooster's rickety Airstream trailer, to the sadness of the discrimination against Romanys - Gitanes - Gypsies - of which he turns out to be one. Condemned to making money as a daredevil in his youth and a blood donor in middle age, Rooster is determined to live large - while the local town does its utmost to boot him out. In between, we are treated to the magic of central England, the fairies and giants and mystical beings that inhabit the woods and glens that for centuries have provided our legends. From Robin Hood to hobbits to Shrek, this setting is as fertile as they come, and author Jez Butterworth milks it to its fullest.The first two acts are riotously funny, setting us up for the dismal fall, which is obvious from the beginning - this can't last. And it doesn't. But along the way we are treated to Rooster's intelligence, his understanding of the way things work, and his role in them. It's a remarkable story of coping and survival in a hostile environment, buried in a haze of gin and marijuana, as anybody in his situation might descend to. To that point, Jerusalem is highly believable. This could (and of course has been) going on in real life. Only the wonderfully involved massive and mammoth lies that Rooster spins are obviously made up. He has made himself into one of the great legends of the woods, remaining Rooster while generation after generation of teenagers in search of something more hang out for a while and move on.A delightfully complex story, though readers don't have to get all this from reading it. As a straight story it is highly entertaining. But make no mistake, there is a masterpiece lurking in these pages.
    • 5/5
      Text of this outstanding play, so memorably portrayed by a Mark Rylance-led cast on the West End and Broadway in 2009-11. The writing is extremely witty and sharp, also tersely expressive and dense in meaning, leading to the Shakespearian comparisons several reviewers have identified. This and the brief but meaningful stage directions reward the reading of this playtext. What is still missing here is some analysis, unpicking the various references to Blake's hymn, to St George, to May-day revels, presumably lamenting some kind of lost or threatened vitality in English culture, presumably again embodied in the character of the play's hero, Rooster Byron.
    • 5/5
      Great play. Really enjoyed it and was a great read.