Jez Butterworth's "Jerusalem" starring Mark Rylance

I'll go to see anything that Mark Rylance is in...  The man is a most wonderful actor, who totally transforms himself to inhabit each role, and brings such sheer zest to his work that he is always a pleasure to watch.  I loved his performances in La Bête and Boeing-Boeing. That said, I was not really crazy about Jez Butterworth's play, "Jerusalem," in which Rylance is now appearing on Broadway.  I attended last night's performance at The Music Box theatre.  The audience stood and cheered at the end, but I was not moved to stand.

The story centers on a ne'er-do-well blowhard of the old English school, ensconced in a beat-up trailer home squating in a municipal park in the village of Flintock, in Wilshire County near Stonehenge.  Rylance's character, called Johnny "Rooster" Byron, idles away all day stoned or high, deals drugs to the local teenage slackers, holds wild parties in the evening, gets thrown out of every tavern in town for his inappropriate conduct, swears and curses a blue streak, and is generally abusive and nasty to everybody, reveling in his squalor.  Not the kind of character with whom one would necessary want to spend three hours in a theater.  (And this is a long three-acter, with one full intermission and one pause later on, that at least for me threatened to wear out its welcome until things heated up for the final scenes.)  Now, of course, Rylance throws himself into this character, and he is surrounded by fine actors who tend to fade into the background due to his overwhelming presence, although I thought John Gallagher, Jr., one of the great young hopes of the Broadway stage, managed to just about hold his own in this company in the significant secondary role of Lee Piper.

One could not possibly fault the technical ends of this production, but I just felt, in the end, a sort of "so what" attitude toward the story, such as it was.  While there was some humor strewn through it, and there were some memorable moments, I thought the momentum lagged at times and, ultimately, all the nastiness of the central character just got rather tiresome.

Mine is definitely a minority opinion on this one, but I call them as I see them.  Rylance deserves some award nominations for this performance, and perhaps Gallagher among the supporting actors, but I'm not crazy about this play.