Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Jerusalem (2012)

Here we have a curious paradox. A play which has won sweeping international acclaim and is spoken of almost reverentially by theatre people. A coup by the Loft in acquiring the right to such an early non-professional performance. Yet an evening of extraordinarily mixed values.

Gordon Vallins brilliantly directs an hour or so of wild, anarchic black comedy which fires us up for what looks sure to be one of the stage events of the decade. But then we are subjected to a mammoth stint of unrelieved tedium. I hasten to say this is no fault of the company, other than by not taking a much-needed decision to cut the piece.

Writer Jez Butterworth has, figuratively, lost the plot. After setting up a magnificent satire on present-day materialism destroying ethical and even ethereal past values, he has then simply not known how or where to stop. He makes a huge mistake by switching the focus away from his barnstorming central character Rooster Byron to seemingly, and quite unnecessarily, validate the roles of the minor folk in the play.

The problem is that this is virtually a one-man show. And David Pinner, tackling the part that garnered Mark Rylance so many awards and so much acclaim in London and on Broadway, does an amazing job. He starts well and continues to grow throughout, dazzling us with an image of wickedly funny coarseness and vulgarity combined with underlying intelligence and sensitivity.

Where author Butterworth truly scores in the earlier stages is with the play’s subtle hints of gipsy folklore and St George’s Day ritual contrasted with the faceless march of so-called progress. Theories that Rooster expounds on the giant who created Stonehenge and the group’s subsequent discussion on lack of coverage by an uninspired BBC Points West are pure delight.

These are nicely realised against a splendid set, complete with live hens, and some telling support work from Martin Eggleston’s reluctant morris dancer, James Wolstenholme’s failed rebel and Jeremy Heynes as an age-old academic straight out of William Blake.

It’s full of wonderful ideas, but the play can still only be seen as a far from streamlined first draft.

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Peter McGarry is an experienced, independent professional theatre critic who has agreed to review Loft Theatre Company productions.

The agreement with the Loft is that Peter is free to express his opinions for good or ill. The Loft Theatre Company has no control whatsoever over the content of these reviews and will never comment publicly on what he writes.