Jerusalem

I lucked into some free seats at the opening night of Jerusalem through a friend of a friend. At the second intermission (it’s a long show), someone came along with bags of flowers for us to toss at the stage during curtain call. The person I was with turned to me and asked, “Why the hell would you live anywhere else?” I have to say: it warmed the cockles. As did Jerusalem, the totally divisive play just imported from London about a retired daredevil named Rooster whose trailer in the woods is a landing ground for all sorts of local misfits, drug users, and aimless teens.

At first intermission, some crotchety old dude behind me croaked, “Is it ABOUT anything other than being druuuunk?!” Browsing through some message boards and other blog reviews, this is something that came up fairly often. People somehow read the show as three hours of watching drunk people mess about. I will just say this: people are stupid.

Jerusalem is about one man clutching onto his ratted, dirty corner of the world in the face of oncoming land development. It’s also about the adolescent anarchy that he so fully embodies, its vibrancy and necessity, but also the way we turn away from things we embraced in younger years. It’s a celebration of childlike qualities that get squashed not only by bad real estate development, but by the soul-deadening nature of some more mature, responsible decisions people make in life. However, it’s not as simple as a love poem to anarchy because as embodied by Mark Rylance, Rooster is no one’s idea of a hero. He’s slovenly, emotionally and physically crippled, and yet still commands a vaguely mythic air about him, one that is echoed in the plays references to giants and Stonehenge and fairies and saints.

I was worried about understanding the play when I first went in because I had heard much made about it being a “state of the nation” play about England, but I also think that’s a pretty narrow read. While there are definitely things about it that are very specifically British (the whole thing happens on St. George’s Day, which I had never even heard of before), it’s a more universal story than that. The Times review seemed curiously accurate in pointing out that it’s the sort of play that could have been written anytime after 1920. The drugs change and the clothes change, but when you get right down to it, this is a railing against the sprawling mess of modernity.

Bottom line: it’s a play that I liked very, very much, but what lifts it above just being a damn good play is the fact that Mark Rylance is probably the most charismatic, enigmatic, and generally damned talented actors I’ve ever seen. A lot of review have been calling his performance things like “one for the ages,” or “the best in years,” and blah, blah, blah. The crazy thing is that even though I had heard all that going in, I still was shocked by how fucking great he was, how repulsive and loveable and funny and scary he managed to be all at once. It’s a huge performance—extremely physical, highly emotive, and all that jazz, but it never feels actorly. It just…is. I was completely mesmerized by him in La Bete, but I think he actually improved upon himself. I’m ever more disappointed that I didn’t go see him in Boeing-Boeing. But given the great stuff I HAVE seen, I try not to dwell too, too much on what I missed.