Here are my notes taken while watching the Broadway play Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, directed by Ian Rickson: We start with a fairy princess singing, and then we are hit with a lot of noise and are introduced to the epitome of slob perfectly, repulsively played by Mark Rylance and his amusing bunch of degenerates with working-class English accents, plus a demented professor (Alan David).
The play is in the new Broadway style: the lowest level of garbage-mouth language. This is another anthropological study of a lower species in their strange repulsive activities - English "hail fellows" (not very "well met") in a drug or alcohol haze. Words are lost in unfamiliar slang. These people are not sinking - they are sunk. Why are we all assembled here to watch these degenerates, with whom we would never want to spend time? I must admit that Rylance debauches really well, and does a great limp (his character was formerly a stunt rider).
ACT 2: A barbarian celebration ceremony with rag-tag costume accoutrements including a dance performance and a tall tale. He calls his band "educationally subnormal outcasts," and he is right. There is an interesting interaction by Rylance with his ex-wife that has the semblance of a play, but it soon slips back into Looney Tunes. Costumes and set are creatively designed by Ultz, and there is great lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin.
ACT 3: Stoned on acid. Is it interesting? Sure. Parts of it are fascinating. So is the lizard house at the zoo or the monkey house -- as long as I can be an observer and not a participant. Rylance's character, Rooster, has a film over his eyes - all is distorted. There is a promise at the beginning that Rooster has to vacate his house trailer in the woods where he deals drugs, and we wind downhill to the next day's deadline, with a closing by the fairy princess. There are a couple of moments of magical power, and a dance with the May Queen. An end ritual calls up ancestors.
This show is enough to drive an alcoholic off the wagon -- you truly need a drink by the end. It finishes with the strangest bows I've ever seen in a theater: nobody cracked a smile. The play is over. The bows are for us to acknowledge the actors, and it's usually a grand interaction. Nothing. Perhaps they were still in character - but without cavorting, I don't think so.
