Butterworth’s language contains great wealth and Johnny “Rooster” Byron, the underdog, the antihero, the revolutionary and the messiah of the work come together in one, it is an incredible creation. But what about the quirky humor of the first act in the style of Little Britain? Peripheral female characters and embarrassing devaluations of women? And his return to a past England – a “sacred land” filled with ancient energies, dwarves and giants of Stonehenge – conveys the disturbing idea that the English language was then a better, purer version of itself? This production brings back some of the players from the original, including director Ian Rickson, as well as Mark Rylance’s Rooster and Mackenzie Crook’s Ginger (an unemployed plaster who considers himself a DJ) and revives, for me, some of the same grabbers. His motley crew of “outcasts, leeches, unwanted [and] beggars “who meet around Rooster’s caravan in an illegally occupied part of the Wiltshire forest to drink and sip Coca-Cola still look like a comic grotesque in its first act. Crew member Motley… Mackenzie Crook as Ginger. Photo: Simon Annand Now, we wonder if they are Brexiters and populists in progress – the deplorable and leftists that can be characterized today. “I’m leaving Wiltshire and my ears are ringing,” says a character who does not see the meaning of other countries. Perhaps if this project had been revived before the EU referendum, the metropolitan masses would not have been so shocked by the result. Uploaded for the first time two years after Blair’s Britain’s death, his references to Chumbawamba, Sex and the City, Bin Laden and the Spice Girls were dated, giving him a wavering sense of a work in the recent past, with a look at ancient past. . His language precedes #MeToo and Black Lives Matter – and it seems. There is a loose joke about dressing in a burqa, another for Nigerian traffic wardens. There are references to women as “slaps”, “bitches” and fat husbands. Byron brags about his conquests and talks about stingy bites, while Ginger states: “I do not actually have GCSE math, but I have a great, big hairy cock and balls.” Surprisingly, this causes laughter on the opening night. Psychologically deep Jack Jack Riddiford, Mark Rylance and Ed Kear in Jerusalem. Photo: Simon Annand These are short references, but they feel repetitive and more. It does not help that a few female characters are marginalized, including Rooster’s ex-partner, Dawn (Indra Ové), who has good lines but has not been on stage for a long time. Where several male characters are later incarnated, women remain equal. But the tone of this production is not set in the first, peculiar act, and the work is not even the sum of its anachronisms. Although the major ideological issues surrounding women and the English language continue to run through the three acts, this is a complex and multifaceted project, evolving in its grandeur, both hydraulic and its contradictory and complex central character. From the second act onwards, it expands into an increasingly tense, mysterious and majestic drama, huge in the sense of tragedy. Many of these are due to Rylance’s epic interpretation, both physically and deeply psychologically. If Rooster starts out as a beast, limping through a history of drunken violence, Rylance captures the wreckage of this man flawlessly, from his gait to his headache from the hangover and the fall of the raging, turbulent bulb. The play takes place on St. George’s Day, in the forest illegally occupied by Rooster as he is about to be evicted, although he continues to protest the council and new housing development nearby. He is at the same time a heroic opposition revolutionary and one of the losers of society. an immortal daring (he claims to have risen from the dead and speaks of the alchemical properties of “Byron”‘s blood) and a misguided bum or “super bum”, as Dawn mockingly calls him, and a bad father. His character grows in strength, growing until he looks almost as big as one of the mythological giants who claims to have spoken close to Stonehenge. But even more tragic – betrayed, alone, insulted, and yet standing, crushed but still provocative. The ideas of the work around myth and identity are lyrical but not completely consistent. Ultz’s stunning set opens up to leftovers outside the Rooster’s caravan – empty bottles, a sticky sofa, a disco ball tied to a tree and even live chickens. But it is inconvenient to see the Cross of St. George engraved on the curtain at first and then a flag hanging on the back of the caravan. This flag, since the first raising of Jerusalem in 2009, has continued to be associated with the far right, and the project’s larger ideas around the English language bring a distant closeness to the romantic narrative chosen from the right. However, any disagreement over the elaboration of his themes cannot be removed from his dramaturgy and his elevated central performance. Is it the best work of our time? Not in my opinion. But Rylance’s Rooster is definitely the best show of the century.
