Almost 17 years have passed since the curtain came down on the first performance of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem at London’s Royal Court Theatre. The buzz around the play has not quieted since. Mark Rylance played the lead, Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron. Mackenzie Crook stood by him as Ginger. Ian Rickson directed.
In 2010, Jerusalem transferred to the West End. In 2011, it went to Broadway. Ten years on, critics labelled it “the greatest British play of the century”. And in 2022, it had a West End revival, with Mark Rylance returning to the role of Rooster. Now, Dua has chosen it as her Monthly Read for April. (You can watch their conversation about the play here.)
Jez wrote an introduction for the programme – a short, fragmentary piece reflecting on the people, places and experiences that shaped the work. Part memoir, part myth making, it reads quite like the play itself: specific and strange, grounded in real things and people but then tipped over into the realm of legend. We’re sharing it here in full.
The Moments That Inspired Jerusalem
In 1994, I moved to Wiltshire and met a man who was banned from every pub in the village. I once picked him up and he was light as a feather. A month later I walked into him in the street by mistake and it was like walking into a tree.
Ten years earlier I worked on a market in St Albans, where a man walked past with a big ginger moustache, in a leather cowboy hat, boots and chaps, horse-brasses on his belt. He lived in a caravan behind Marks & Spencer and collected glasses in the pub. They tried to throw him off his patch, but he refused to go. The night before the police came to evict him, he doused his home in petrol, burned it to the ground, and disappeared.
Fifteen years later I broke a finger playing cricket, went to the hospital, where I met a man who told me he was there to sell his blood. It was a rare strain, and he was the last person in England who had it.
Seventeen years earlier I worked in an old hotel as a kitchen porter, where the old Welsh waiter told me that the previous night he had had a dream that he had been kidnapped by Nigerian traffic wardens.
Ten years later I had a conversation with a publican over a hedge, who wept and told me he was trapped, that he could never, ever, set foot in his pub again. Then he went back there and worked another fifteen years.
A year earlier I’d sat in a village hall and watched the outgoing May Queen hand her crown to the new May Queen. The Old Queen was very cool and aloof, until the moment came, whereupon she burst into tears, and ran out.
Ten years earlier, to avoid doing cross country in the rain, each Thursday I visited an old lady who lived near my school. Each time she opened the door she would say ‘Hello Maureen’.
Twenty years later I met a man in a pub who killed 200 cows a day. He was 64 years old and had never left the West Country.
In March 1980 a girl in my class at school went out to the dual carriageway, flagged down a lorry and ended up in Scotland.
On 1 June 2003 I was driving through rural Dorset when I came round a bend and there was a hand-painted sign that said ‘Rooster’s Wood. Keep Out.’
The next day on the A30 outside Upavon, just past the Little Chef, I met a giant who said he built Stonehenge.
There’s More – Delve Deeper Into Jerusalem With The Service95 Book Club...
WATCH Dua’s interview with playwright Jez Butterworth
LISTEN to their conversation with the Service95 Book Club podcast
NOTE the books, films and TV shows that inspired Jerusalem
PRESS PLAY on Jez’s writing soundtrack
