Jerusalem review: Mark Rylance gives ‘the greatest performance of the century’
Back in 2009, Jez Butterworth’s play took the world by storm. Now it’s back

“There’s mighty, and then there’s Mark Rylance in Jerusalem, a performance so powerfully connected to its part that it feels almost superhuman,” said Matt Wolf in The New York Times. Back in 2009, Jez Butterworth’s play, and Rylance’s astonishing central turn in it, took the world by storm. Now it is back, once again transporting audiences to a Wiltshire wood on St George’s Day, where Johnny “Rooster” Byron – a charismatic, barrel-chested reprobate who deals drugs and parties with local youths – is facing eviction from his illegal encampment.
The production reunites Rylance, 62, with director Ian Rickson and some of the original cast, including Mackenzie Crook, who is still “heartbreaking” as Ginger, the most loyal of Rooster’s ragtag band. And it is a triumph: this is “no museum piece coasting on past kudos, but a vital experience with a revitalising effect”.
Jerusalem is “the great play of the century so far”, said Sarah Crompton on What’s On Stage. And here, “it is even better than before: the performances richer, the strain of melancholy that underpins its fierce comic energy stronger”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The play’s “dark undercurrents” are also more disturbing, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. It plays out in a country “ragged with argument and disputation, that has seen Brexit, rising racism, culture wars and the growth of performative patriotism”. In a world changed by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, “the male characters’ bad-taste jokes” and casual racism “look uglier now, as do references to underage sex”; and the female characters are still “underwritten”.
On the other hand, the play’s portrayal of a group of lost souls and “malcontents” seems yet more telling, as does the brutal attack on Rooster as a “gyppo outsider”. Jerusalem is a play about mystery and the “importance of legend”, but it also interrogates the danger of myth-making, making the drama feel “sharply pertinent”.
Heretical as it may seem, I did not love Jerusalem when I first saw it, said Arifa Akbar in The Observer, with its harking back to a mythical England, filled with “energies, druids and Stonehenge giants”. And the “Little Britain-style humour” of the first act is even more jarring now. But the play is not “the sum total of its anachronisms”; it is a complicated, layered piece that in the second act expands into a “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.” I don’t think this is the greatest play of the century, but “Rylance’s Rooster is surely the greatest performance of the century”.
Apollo Theatre, London W1. Until 7 August
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Mustardy beans and hazelnuts recipe
The Week Recommends Nod to French classic offers zingy, fresh taste
-
Susie Dent picks her favourite books
The Week Recommends The lexicographer and etymologist shares works by Jane Goodall, Noel Streatfeild and Madeleine Pelling
-
6 incredible homes under $1 million
Feature Featuring a home in the National Historic Landmark District of Virginia and a renovated mid-century modern house in Washington
-
The Harder They Come: ‘triumphant’ adaptation of cinema classic
The Week Recommends ‘Uniformly excellent’ cast follow an aspiring musician facing the ‘corruption’ of Kingston, Jamaica
-
House of Guinness: ‘rip-roaring’ Dublin brewing dynasty period drama
The Week Recommends The Irish series mixes the family tangles of ‘Downton’ and ‘Succession’ for a ‘dark’ and ‘quaffable’ watch
-
Dead of Winter: a ‘kick-ass’ hostage thriller
The Week Recommends Emma Thompson plays against type in suspenseful Minnesota-set hair-raiser ‘ringing with gunshots’
-
A Booker shortlist for grown-ups?
Talking Point Dominated by middle-aged authors, this year’s list is a return to ‘good old-fashioned literary fiction’
-
Fractured France: an ‘informative and funny’ enquiry
The Week Recommends Andrew Hussey's work is a blend of ‘memoir, travelogue and personal confession’