The Magic of Music at the Belasco

Music is mysterious.  It pulls emotions out of us, it urges us to remember for good or ill, pleasure or pain.  It riles us up, it calms us down.  Among other neurologists, Oliver Sachs particularly has written about music’s healing capacity.  Music therapy for people with dementia has been shown to awaken lost energies and memories.

The odd story of Farinelli and the King is an example of music’s magical power.  King Philippe V of Spain, while some days brilliant, was just as often deeply disturbed, hiding in his room, fearful of other people, holding conversation with his goldfish Alfonso.  When his wife Queen Isabella heard castrato Farinelli sing she believed he could help her husband, so the two made the arduous journey (this was early in the 18^th century) from England to Spain for this great experiment.  Surely hearing Farinelli’s glorious voice could awaken the king from his coma-like state.

This play is based on the real relationship and real story that Farinelli, a great castrato of the 18^th century, gave up his opera career to live with the king and queen of Spain for nine years, singing to keep the king’s humors level.  In addition to my interest in the subject matter, the play itself more than held my attention and I cared very much for the characters as written by Claire Van Kampen.  It is most beautifully produced with fine musicians and actors gracing the stage.  Ms. Van Kampen is also the musical arranger, so clearly knows her subject.  Jonathan Fensom’s designs immediately draw us into the London theatre, the Madrid palace as well as the house in the forest we experience later.  

John Dove’s direction pulls all these marvelous elements together for a musical and engaging evening.

Mark Rylance plays King Philippe V.  Mark Rylance is a genius. Funny, endearing, sometimes frightening and heartbreaking. Philippe is at his best away from the responsibilities and clutter of court and city life, out in the forest where he wants to hear the stars singing. Don’t we all. When Jonathan Fensom’s scenic design transports us to the forest, we too wish to stay.

 

Mark Rylance as King Philippe V

Queen Isabella as played by the engaging Melody Grove is practical, powerful and passionate.  She is the one who brings the audience along on this journey, making us root for her goals to save her husband.

Dan Crane acts Farinelli with sensitivity and grace, while Iestyn Davies, a countertenor, sings Farinelli. 

It’s an interesting conceit:  When the scene calls for Farinelli to sing, Mr. Davies enters the stage dressed exactly like Crane’s Farinelli, and begins to sing and act his aria, prowling the stage.  Crane’s Farinelli remains, silent, not too close to his alter ego, not too far, communing with the inner spirit of the singer Farinelli.  At least that’s what it looked like to me, and I was riveted.  Crane seems to be subtly reflecting what’s going on inside the singer Davies.

This was oddly fascinating to watch and oddly not disruptive to the action.

Conflict external to the king’s distress is largely supplied by the King’s wily and seemingly advanced Doctor Cervi, deftly played by Huss Garbiya.  The doctor (and Isabella and the King) are in constant conflict with the king’s minister De La Cuadra, coldly and beautifully played by Edward Peel. 

Queen Isabella originally found Farinelli performing for London theatrical manager John Rich, who is wittily and convincingly played by Colin Hurley. 

Like the Globe’s last production here at the Belasco Theatre, the set design is in two levels, the gallery wrapped around and above the playing area on three sides so that audience members may sit on the stage surrounding the players, while the upper back gallery is occupied by the excellent musicians.  We can see all, yet they don’t draw attention from the players.  It is imaginative and impressive and very well used.  In the second half, Mr. Rylance adds a third level as the King chats with the audience as if they were denizens of the forest. 

If you’ve read what I’ve written in past months about the musical passions of Indecent and The Band’s Visit, you may wonder about the music in Farinelli and the King.  A harpsichord plays the audience in, and is joined in the half hour before the play starts by a violinist, a cellist, and a lute player.  These and more musicians accompany much of the action for the evening and afford great pleasure. 

This play was not as effective for me as it will be for opera lovers.  The formal style of operatic singing awakens no passion in me.  Although I intellectually know how powerful the music is (and I know we cannot know what a castrato really sounded like), I was not brought to any emotion by the singing.  Mr. Rylance’s performance as the troubled king showed me, however, all I needed to know about that music’s effect.

Finally, I must mention the fabulous hair and wigs by Campbell Young that helped set us in Madrid or the forest and truly complemented the character development.

Farinelli and the King plays at the Belasco only until March 25, 2018.  Performances are marvelous in a brilliant design, and the play stands on its own without plays of a similar “type” to compare it to — in any case, nothing and no one compares with Mark Rylance.  If tickets are still available, get to the Belasco and hear the singing of the stars.

 

Mark Rylance as audience at the Delacorte in 2015.  Photo:  Matt Hennessy

~ Molly Matera, signing off to contemplate a new year.  Be happy and healthy.

On the Birth of the Bard

Last year I wrote a reasonably well-prepared post about William Shakespeare and his plays in celebration of his birthday on this very blog. Alas, this year, well, I’ve been a bit lax in gathering data and thoughts and such, so I may be a bit doddery (Lear creeps in already) in these scribblings.  I will now stop procrastinating, for as Will said, “In delay there lies no plenty.”  Or Good’n’Plenty.  Off we go.

The thing about Shakespeare is that we go to hear the words.  We see the same plays over and over again because the same play can take a different path when someone new directs it or acts in it or designs it or thinks about it and puts it all together to communicate their interpretation to us, the willing audience.  And if we disagree, we get to argue about it.  Who could ask for anything more.

We will see their spiffy production values and costumes and themes and such, but still we go to hear.  Hear the same sentence sound remarkably different because a different actor is saying it to yet another actor.  Let’s take King Lear, for example; it’s a year for Lears.  There’s your Lear, and there’s your Lear talking to your Regan.  Or your Goneril.  Or your Cordelia.  And your Lear has different feelings about each of these daughters depending on the actor playing Lear, the actor playing Goneril, the actor playing Regan, the actor playing Cordelia.  So many dynamics to play with, so many possibilities.  And each time we hear this Lear we haven’t seen before speak the same lines another Lear did to his daughters, the words are new and fresh.

Everyone wants to do Lear — the play has very fine male roles, of course, but also two excellent female roles and one possibly impossible female role — so there’ll be plenty more to come and to compare.  All of this applies to many of the plays, of course.  Lear is an easy example this year. 

Diana Rigg as Regan

Last month I saw Theatre For a New Audience’s (“TFANA”) production of King Lear in which Michael Pennington undertook the role of Lear under the direction of Arin Arbus.  His Lear was a pretty angry fellow in full control of his faculties when he makes all the foolish assumptions and foolhardy decisions of his first scene.  Later he goes a bit dotty and becomes softer and more understanding.  He notices things then — things like there were subjects (people) to be cared for, to be protected, in his kingdom, and he hadn’t done his job well.  It was a very socially-aware Lear.  I’m told, although I didn’t see it myself, that Frank Langella’s Lear performed the month before at BAM, started off that same first scene practically doddering and then became clearer in his madness.  Utterly different men, utterly different choices, utterly different relationships.  In the TFANA Lear, my favorites were the Regan (a marvelously sharp and cynical Bianca Amato) and her husband Cornwall (a delightfully perverse Saxon Palmer).  I decided to re-view a Lear still in my memory from the 1980s for its fabulous Edmund and Edgar pairing of Robert Lindsay and David Threlfall.  The Lear was Olivier.  The Fool, oh the Fool, was John Hurt!  Next week I’ll be seeing a live broadcast from London of a production directed by Sam Mendes in which Simon Russell Beale takes on Lear.

But I digress. 

In the past year I saw some splendid productions of Shakespeare plays, including —

• London’s Donmar Warehouse’s production of Julius Caesar¹ set in a women’s prison transferred handily to St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.  Directed by the fabulous Phyllida Lloyd, Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus and Frances Barber as Julius Caesar led an all-female cast to the heights and depths and yes it worked.  This was the perfect example of familiar lines carrying all new meaning based on the interpretations of different direction, actors, genders, and styles.

Harriet Walter as Brutus

• TFANA’s inaugural production in its new home in another part of Brooklyn was of A Midsummer Night’s Dream² directed by Julie Taymor.  It was as magical and delectable and high-flying as you might expect from Ms. Taymor.

Tina Benko as Titania

• In addition to more snow than we’re accustomed to, winter brought us two plays in repertory³ from Shakespeare’s Globe, not in its usual visiting venue in lower Manhattan.  Rather, these two gorgeous (costumes, set, music, everything), all-male Globe productions traveled to Broadway. 

-         Twelfe Night starred Mark Rylance as Olivia in what might be the most extraordinary performance I’ve seen him give yet, and he’s always remarkable.  Stephen Fry’s Malvolio was also delicious.

-         Richard III starred Mr. Rylance again in the title role, but the play showed itself as it is — so much about Richard that the other characters and the story are short-changed.  Not by the actors, however.  For just one example, Samuel Barnett (a fine Viola in the Twelfe Night) was a fabulous and powerful Queen Elizabeth in Richard III.

At a movie-house I saw the Donmar Warehouse’s production of Coriolanus⁴ broadcast live from Covent Garden, London, to Kew Gardens, Queens.  The live broadcast was almost as exciting as being there live to see Tom Hiddleston’s performance as a youthful and disdainful Coriolanus.  It was an interesting production of a problematical play.  And, to follow up, I also watched the Ralph Fiennes film version.  Two views of Coriolanus in one year is quite unusual.

The long-awaited Joss Whedon black-and-white modern day Much Ado About Nothing⁵ opened on a rainy night last summer.  It was fun, and there were some delightful performances, but the mores and manners of Much Ado do not lend themselves well to modern settings, in my opinion.  Viewing that film did, however, inspire me to re-view Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film of the same play, which was a polar opposite to the Whedon film.  It’s all a matter of interpretation, not to mention mood.

How far afield can one go in interpreting Shakespeare’s words?  From The Tempest played on an Elizabethan stage in which the sea and sand and cave are all artfully explained in poetry because they cannot be physically brought into the old Globe, all the way to a science fiction film that introduced Robby the Robot as a sort of Ariel and Dr. Morbius as Prospero, with Anne Francis — in remarkably skimpy outfits for 1956; there is clearly nothing new under the sun — as Miranda on the planet Altair IV instead of a desert island.  Shakespeare:  Passport to the Universe.

Among my theatre goings this year, I saw an interesting new play that echoed themes of A Doll’s House, which I also saw this year in an excellent production directed by Carrie Cracknell with Hattie Morahan as Nora. But I won’t be seeing either of those plays again.  It’s Shakespeare that bears repeating, that we go to year after year, wondering how will that director show it, that actor interpret it, what will it look like to an audience that can never get enough of Shakespeare.  How will it sound this time?

Right now, for mood music, I’ve got a DVD of “Theatre of Blood” playing in the background — the story of a Shakespearean actor who decides that first he must kill all the critics, all by methods found in the Bard’s plays.  Vincent Price, Diana Rigg — full of Shakespearean quotes and plots and a cavalcade of British actors of stage and screen.  Such fun.

By the way, Michael Graves, an old friend from my acting days, moved down to New Mexico, and he is right now rehearsing his first Lear for a reading at the Aux Dog Theatre.  Anyone anywhere near Albuquerque, please go see him on Thursday for me and continue this Lear year (http://www.auxdog.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=60&products_id=502 ).

Happy Birthday, Will.  Many exciting returns of the day.  And thank you for your never-ending gifts.

¹ http://www.mollyismusing.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-donmar-st-anns-warehouses-all.html

² http://www.mollyismusing.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-dream-opening-for-tfanas-new-home.html

³ http://www.mollyismusing.blogspot.com/2014/01/in-repertory-twelfe-night-and-winter-of.html

⁴ http://www.mollyismusing.blogspot.com/2014/02/coriolanus-at-donmar-or-live-theatre.html

⁵ http://www.mollyismusing.blogspot.com/search/label/Joss%20Whedon

~ Molly Matera, sending you off to another site where lots of people are wishing Shakespeare a happy 450^th Birthday:  http://birthday2014.bloggingshakespeare.com/

In Repertory: Twelfe Night and the Winter of Our Discontent

Shakespeare’s Globe is in town, and instead of performing one play at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University downtown as they usually do, they brought two to perform in repertory for a few months on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre.  The Belasco is gorgeous, but with this company, it’s difficult to appreciate the beauties of the interior because as the audience enters the theatre, the actors are onstage dressing and being dressed.  Watching this fascinating process is riveting — observing the way period costumes are built, layer upon layer, onto the human body; some actors are sewn into their costumes; and seeing men turned into women. 

As in Shakespeare’s time, the female roles are not played by women, but rather by men.  Each man playing a female has a diverting way of walking, almost gliding across the stage, sometimes mincing, swinging the heavy skirts to their best advantage.  Watching them before the play even starts is mesmerizing.

Twelfe Night deserves its own glowing review.  Alas, I bubbled over with praise of it to friends and didn’t write down a word, so its mentions here will essentially be comparative.  I saw the plays a month apart — Twelfe Night (as named in the First Folio and printed in the program) on Friday the 6 December and, to start the new year off right, Richard III on Thursday the 2 January (yes, the night of the first snowstorm of 2014, nicknamed “Hercules”).  Perhaps we should have seen the Richard in this program first, so our expectations for the next play would not have been so high.  The Twelfe Night was deliriously funny, a pinnacle for all others to attempt.  As it was, the near perfect Twelfe Night left us with high expectations that were dashed the night the snow fell outside the performance of The Tragedie of King Richard the Third. 

 

Sebastian and Olivia, Orsino and Viola in Twelfe Night.  (Photo Credit: Joan Marcus)

What is it about Richard III?  I am often dissatisfied with productions of the play, no matter who excels in the leading role.  Is it just poorly written?  Well, with all due respect to the incomparable Bard, compared to other plays, it is, rather.  (He had to be careful, of course.  The late-arriving protagonist/hero of the play, Richmond, would be the great grandfather of Shakespeare’s Queen, so the War of the Roses had to end on a particularly redeeming note for the ancestors of the ruling monarch.)  This production from the Globe is well cast but that isn’t enough — especially not with someone as strong and magnetic as Mark Rylance prancing about the stage as Richard of Gloucester.

 

Rylance as Richard and Samuel Barnett as Queen Elizabeth

Once costumes are donned and the musicians applauded, Mark Rylance as Richard seduces us immediately.  Rylance found every hint of humor in the play, and made us as guilty as Richard by making us laugh with him throughout the evening.  The problem — and it may be the play as much as director Tim Carroll — is that the good actors working with Mr. Rylance fade in his aura, with two exceptions:  Samuel Barnett (a fine Viola in the Twelfe Night) as Queen Elizabeth (mother of the princes in the tower, wife of the sickly then late King Edward IV) gives as good as he… she… gets and is marvelous and powerful, every inch a queen; and the Buckingham as played by Angus Wright (last seen in one of the most delightful performances of Andrew Aguecheek I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience) could more than hold his own with Rylance. 

Often we see a star turn in a play like Richard III, and often we just think we got the second string touring cast in all but the lead role.  This time, though, we have very recent evidence of the finely honed skills of this company of players.  Which leads back to the play, which needed some judicious cutting, but perhaps not the cutting it did, in fact, receive.  More on that anon.

 

Joseph Timms as Lady Anne and Mark Rylance as King Richard III.  Photo Credit:  Joan Marcus.

Let’s look at the actors in this company.  Peter Hamilton Dyer’s Catesby was better than his often incomprehensible Feste, but Liam Brennan’s Clarence partook in one of the longest and dullest death scenes (and very poorly staged, Mr. Carroll) in Shakespeare despite his sexy turn as Orsino in Twelfe Night.  Paul Chahidi was a marvelous Maria in Twelfe Night, but his Hastings seemed stock and his Tyrrell seemed… well, rather mad.  As if he were speaking in tongues, his delivery rang through the theatre without cohering. 

Colin Hurley’s King Edward IV and his Lord Stanley were well defined and differentiated.  After his wild and woolly and hilarious Toby Belch in Twelfe Night, he was happily not a disappointment in Richard.

Joseph Timms was an unusually good Sebastian in the Twelfe Night. Generally a rather thankless role seemingly cast because of a resemblance to the Viola, his Sebastian had verve and vigor. Timms’ turn as Lady Anne (one of the most difficult roles in Shakespeare since her actions make no sense at all) in Richard III was interesting in large part due to his physical behavior.  That the character is ultimately unconvincing based on the famous wooing scene is the fault of the playwright more than the actor.

Kurt Egyiawan was not as interesting a Valentine in Twelfe Night as he was in his two roles in Richard III:  His Duchess of York (that is, King Richard’s mother) was basically cranky, but his physical work was good.  In the second half of the play he was Richmond, quite believable as the virtuous prince, a just man, a tad dull (Richmond always is), a fitting founder of the Tudor dynasty leading in a direct line to Shakespeare’s real life monarch, Elizabeth I.

Someone missing, you say?  Yes indeed.  There was one queen missing from this production of Richard III:  Margaret, termagant, widow of the dead Lancastrian King Henry VI who was ousted by the Yorkists (Richard’s family), and mother of the slain Prince Edward (who was the husband of Lady Anne, later Queen Anne – get it?).  This character should be the canker, the boil on Richard’s butt, an enraged victim of the Yorkists who teaches all others how to curse.  She was a major character in the Three Parts of Henry VI, and she’s fun.  She plays a major role in the conversation of the once powerful now powerless women of the play, leaving only the ineffective Queen Anne written in to join the bereft Queen Elizabeth, and the cranky Duchess of York to lament in Act IV scene iv, the traditional wailing women scene.  Perhaps the embarrassment of riches of too many queens in the script was seen as too confusing?  The long feud between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists certainly does not come as second nature, particularly to an American audience.  Nevertheless, Margaret is a vital part of the chemistry of the players.  Her absence contributed to the lopsidedness of the production, leaving out chunks of the politics, oversimplifying the changeable loyalties, essentially eliminating the history of each individual in the story, as if their own actions or inactions hadn’t brought them to this very place.  Richard III is the culmination of generations of internecine warfare; neither he nor his England sprang from nothing.  Ignoring what came before for the rest of the characters makes Richard III a showcase for Mr. Rylance instead of a play with intricate plotting and storylines.  What goes around comes around, that’s the moral of the story, but you won’t get it in this production.

Losing Margaret is short-sighted on the part of the producers and director.  I am far from a purist, but cutting Margaret’s character and its function diminishes the play — and even without her the production ran three hours!

Gentle reminder:  Twelfe Night was well nigh perfect.  Its subtitle is “or What You Will” and we will, we will.  Liam Brennan’s Orsino fell in love with the girl disguised as a boy played by an actor disguised as both, the wonderful Samuel Barnett.  Their chemistry was sparkling, ready to burst into flame.  The old gang at Olivia’s place were naughty and lusty, with superlative performances by Colin Hurley as Sir Toby Belch, Paul Chahidi as Maria, and Angus Wright as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

 

Rylance as Olivia and Fry as Malvolio in Twelfe Night (Photo Credit:  Joan Marcus)

Mark Rylance proves he does not need to edit a play to make himself the star — his Olivia is timid, brittle, then giddy and lusty and wild, his powdered face malleable, his body alternating between stiff and yearning, girdled and rubbery.  His line readings will overpower my mind whenever I re-read the play.  He’s a comic genius with brilliant timing — which shows up in his Richard as well, of course.

The member of the company who appeared in Twelfe Night but not in Richard III is the estimable Stephen Fry, whose Malvolio was articulate, witty, arrogant, and deserved what he got — until he didn’t.  Suffice to say, Fry was an excellent Malvolio and I hope he returns to the New York stage soon.

 

Samuel Barnett as Viola and Mark Rylance as Olivia in Twelfe Night (Photo credit Joan Marcus)

In general this is a marvelous company.  The scenic and costume design by Jenny Tiramani merge into a whole that is magnificent.  The audience members on the stage may see a lot of backsides, but their proximity to the players makes them part of the experience, and the players’ connections to living audience is just thrilling to see.  Music by Claire van Kampen is period, fitting, and well played and well utilized in both productions.  Director Tim Carroll worked wonders with the great Twelfe Night but fell down on the job with Richard.  That said, I have no knowledge of the script he was handed, since no dramaturge is mentioned in the program. 

Editing Shakespeare isn’t easy, though often necessary.  The wrong bits were edited out of this Richard.  Thankfully the Twelfe Night was so extraordinary it entirely redeems the problems of the Richard.

~ Molly Matera, signing off and urging you to see at least one if not both of these plays in repertory.  (If just one, you know the Twelfe Night is the better!)

Mark Rylance Rocks "Jerusalem"

Being neither English nor Anglican, I did not grow up singing “Jerusalem.” My first memory of the song was the rendition by Emerson Lake and Palmer, who rocked it. Then I read William Blake’s poem, and subsequently heard passionate to passive renditions of the song in countless British films. Still the song does not have an emotional meaning for me outside of the cultural events with which I associate it. For me, “Jerusalem” is not the heart and soul of my country. Jez Butterworth’s play of that name, though, makes me think it is otherwise for the English.

Mark Rylance rocks Jez Butterworth’s “Jerusalem” at the Music Box Theatre. This production traveled from London’s Royal Court Theatre with a buzz before it, and it does not disappoint. Setting, lighting, sound, cast, direction, are all spot on, exciting, and mesmerizing. The play’s three acts fly by.

A curtain adorned with a faded Cross of St. George hides the stage. A young girl dressed as a woodland fairy, wings and all, walks center and stands before the curtain. She sings “Jerusalem” a capella -- it is poignant, yearning, lonely. Then a raucous blast frightens her away. The curtain rises on chaos, a happening, a helluva party, the sort few will remember hours later in daylight.

The morning after: A long and very old mobile home has settled down in the forest. Loudspeakers are attached to its roof. Chickens in a coop live underneath at one end, somehow surviving the party and many others like it. The place looks like a junk yard – broken chairs, a table, an old turntable that has somehow survived life outside, a moldy old couch on a lopsided deck, a stack of LPs, bottles, a refrigerator, rubbish everywhere, and a trough filled with water. A man and woman of officialdom enter, Mrs. Fawcett cajoling Mr. John Byron to come out with her very own loudspeaker -- he does not -- and telling him what the notice they’re posting on the trailer door says: He’s being evicted. This entire incident is videotaped by the man, Mr. Parsons, who lets us know that this is a choice spot from which Mr. Byron is being evicted. Which makes his eviction immediately suspect, does it not?

Mark Rylance owns the stage before we even see him, and when we do, we are won. Hung over from the happening the night before, he heads for the trough of water, but he doesn’t merely splash water on his face. He does a headstand into the water. He shakes his head like a matted mutt, he growls, he drags his bad leg, he’s a mongrel pacing his territory. He is the ruler of his rubbish pile. An Englishman’s home is his castle.

Into this solitude breaks Ginger, a petulant, lost young man, older than the teenagers who are drawn to Johnny’s free lifestyle, cynical, perhaps heartbroken. He is played with sympathy and anger by Mackenzie Crook. He is immediately put out that he wasn’t invited to whatever party destroyed Rooster’s homestead – Rooster insists it was just a gathering, unplanned, and proceeds to tell the first of many utterly absurd stories to divert recriminations, responsibility, or reproach. He uses stories and seduction to fend off chiding.

One by one, partiers and chiders join this St. George’s Day gathering while not far off the town is having its more staid Flintock Fair – at which Rooster entertained years before, as a daredevil.

These people have all the “mod cons,” a large flat screen television, texting, videos on the cell phone, but the story is an old one. The pied piper for the youth of the area, going beyond one generation, and the people who turn him out.

The entire cast is sterling -- these actors live inside their characters’ hearts, they move with their characters’ bodies. This company is compact and concise in its absolute wildness. One might almost think they’re all just improvising, but of course they’re not. The stoned storytelling, the revelry, the uninhibited and far from sober behavior of the characters -- almost all of the characters -- could mislead us into thinking this a mash, a morass. It is not. It is precisely plotted, its rhythms building boldly to its closing drumbeats.

Butterworth’s seemingly disheveled script is all over the place, mad in its precision. Ian Rickson’s direction is tight, sensitive, choreographed chaos. This is a complex orchestration of a multi-layered story, and Rickson conducts masterfully. Add to this that Rylance plays the central role with abandon, his whole heart tossed into the hands of the audience, and “Jerusalem” becomes an entrancing night of enchantment in the Wiltshire woods. I felt as if I had been at a wild party, dancing on tables, crooning the blues into the night, partaking in heady conversations…which I forgot half of next morning.

Not surprisingly, aspects of “Jerusalem” remind me of the Angry Young Men writing in England in the 1950s (the label appropriately coined by the Royal Court Theatre back in the day). Butterworth’s Johnny “Rooster” Byron was an angry young man some years ago, not of the right class, not of the right background to be accepted into the middle class society, but he had no inclination to be part of that hypocritical mass. Johnny has always lived on the outskirts of society, in his youth as a daredevil, and for close to thirty years in this immobile mobile home in the forest – for so long that many of the locals call this spot “Rooster’s Wood.” He is no longer an angry young man: Fifty if he’s a day, and rather the worse for wear, with one bum leg, an inability to wake up or get through a day without massive quantities of drugs and alcohol, he has managed to get himself barred from every pub in town despite the fact that he’s the town’s drug dealer.

We’re more than halfway through the play when someone calls Rooster “Gypo.” Once said, it’s repeated. Rooster’s position degrades as the play progresses. Rooster is not just the odd man out, the outsider– Rooster Byron is a total outcast. The angry young men of the 1950s might not have championed him; their class war was not without its prejudices. Jez Butterworth is the angry young man for the 21^st century, putting age old racism center stage.

Rooster seems to have some friends of his own generation – the Professor, a mild-mannered and very muddled man who mistakes Ginger for a Doctor Maureen Pringle from the university mathematics faculty, and searches in vain for Mary, his dog, who will never return. Alan David is delightful in this role. His sweet and sad professor has moments of lucidity which never lead him to unkindness. Wesley, on the other hand, is a publican who enters wearing the belled costume of a morris dancer. Max Baker plays Wesley as a sad sack, a man in mid-life crisis, sorrowing over his (and Johnny’s) lost youth. He needs Johnny’s accepting company and his drugs, but won’t stand up for him when it counts. Mostly, though, Rooster is the pied piper of Flintock, Wiltshire, welcoming its teenagers to his caravan and his campfire.

Woven through the tale of Rooster’s trials is the missing girl, Phaedra, whom we suspect is being abused by her lout of a stepfather, Troy (an earthy Barry Sloane in a repulsively realistic performance). Once the other teenage girls tell us about Phaedra, we realize we’ve seen her, and suspect we know where she’s hiding out. Where do all the teenagers hang out, as their parents did before them?

Johnny "Rooster" Byron is a storyteller, and a hilarious one is of his conversation with a giant. He tells the story of their meeting near the A14, in which they talked of the weather. Johnny, of course, plays both himself and the giant. He tells his rapt teenage listeners (and Ginger, who is no teenager) that the giant gave him a gift of an earring – the giant’s own earring, which of course is rather large when brought to the scale of a mere human. It’s a conga drum. Johnny challenges the disbelieving Ginger to play the drum, which would bring forth the giants. Ginger insists he doesn’t believe it, but he daren’t strike the drum. Such is the mesmerizing effect of Johnny’s tales.

What struck me most in this production is that no member of the company disappointed for the briefest moment. Every actor lived his or her role so completely, each performance is fully informed, fully committed with exquisite timing. Besides those I’ve already mentioned --

Aimeé-Ffion Edwards plays Phaedra of the sweet voice as an ordinary bubble-headed teenager, demanding Johnny be what he is not.

Sarah Moyle is appropriately uptight and righteous as Ms. Fawcett, sent by the Council to inform Mr. John Byron of his place – but what is she hiding? Harvey Robinson as Mr. Parsons follows her, younger, a bit awestruck, toeing the line that will age him to match Ms. Fawcett.

Lee, the teenager preparing to leave home to embark on a great Australian adventure, the thinker of the group, yet dense, is played by John Gallagher, Jr. His Lee has heart, regrets, fears, and honor.

Davey is played by Danny Kirrane as an angry young man with no illusions. He spends his days in the slaughterhouse and his nights getting stoned and drunk enough to go to work the next day.

Pea, a silly and kindhearted teenager reveling in her acts of rebellion is played on the mark by Molly Ranson; and her buddy Tanya, who desperately wants to give herself to Lee, is brazenly played by Charlotte Mills.

Dawn, played by Geraldine Hughes, arrives expecting Johnny to be a responsible father for their son while she knows he’ll never be more than a loving one.

Scenic and costume design by Ultz are extraordinary, imaginative, bringing us to this place to hang with these people. Mimi Jordan Sherin’s lighting design warms us as the day brightens and maintains the reality of Rooster’s Wood. Ian Dickinson’s sound design welcomes us into the theatre with birdsong, then blasts our eardrums for the gathering and, well, whenever Rooster wants to.

Rooster’s home is an eyesore to anyone who is not a teenager or a juvenile delinquent (the latter not circumscribed by age). More, he does not live peacefully in the woods. He is loud. 400 yards away from Rooster’s Wood is the New Estate. Within a year or so of Rooster’s eviction, we just know the forest will have been razed and a new New Estate will overlook the old New Estate. Putting aside the fact that few, if any, of us would want Rooster as a neighbor, this smacks of eminent domain, overdevelopment, and just plain greed, along with enforced conformity. Johnny “Rooster” Byron is, unfortunately for him – and perhaps for England -- not Robin Hood, just a pied piper, and none of his followers are going to rescue him.

By play’s end Johnny is beaten down by the law, beaten bloody by the bad guys, betrayed by his friends young and old. He beats the drum, and we are with him as he calls forth the giants. The people of England -- not the councils or corporations, the people -- cry for the giants of old, Johnny’s giants who built Stonehenge, cry for St. George, for freedoms gobbled up by conformity and civilization. Johnny “Rooster” Byron commands it, and we believe. And hope.

"Jerusalem" is a play to be seen, heard and experienced. Happily it’s here in New York City at the Music Box Theatre through 24 July 2011. Do not miss it.

~ Molly Matera, logging off to read some Blake…and perhaps some Shakespeare…Happy Birthday, Will