THE ROOSTER CROWS
Sons of Anarchy star Kim Coates returns to the Toronto stage in Jerusalem,
In 2009, Jez Butterworth created another icon of English folklore.
Johnny “Rooster” Byron is Shakespeare’s lush Falstaff or faerie Puck, J.M. Barrie’s eternal boy Peter Pan, the noble Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, any unwitting man who came face to face with a giant, and more.
He is both an amalgamation of the mythical English men who came before him and a man made purely in the present.
“Jerusalem,” the William Blake poem that shares its name with Butterworth’s play, imagines Jesus Christ walking on English soil. With Jerusalem, his “state of the nation” play, Butterworth not so subtly makes connections between Rooster and Christ himself.
That poem ends: “I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.”
And there Butterworth finds his crux: Rooster’s version of Jerusalem is far different than that of the other residents of the fictional town of Flintock, and both sides are waging battles of will and worse to fight for their visions.
Rooster (played in a remarkable return to the Toronto stage by Sons of Anarchy star Kim Coates) lives a squalid life, squatting since the 1990s in a rusty old trailer in the middle of the forest.
His behaviour has alienated him from town life; his lifestyle is getting him evicted and the forest he lives in is being stripped to make room for more houses.
Part of Flintock is going along with the widely accepted idea of progress, such as Rooster’s old friend Wesley (Daniel Kash), whose bar is now part of a national chain, while Rooster fights valiantly against it.
Caught in the middle are the youths of Flintock, who flock to Rooster’s trailer in search of parties, drugs and the feeling of community Rooster has fostered. Along with aging amateur DJ Ginger (Philip Riccio), they include Australia-bound Lee (Christo Graham), Flintock lifer Davey (Peter Fernandes), underwritten females Pea (Katelyn McCulloch) and Tanya (Brenna Coates), and the Pro- fessor (Nicholas Campbell), the faded echo of a respectable English stereotype.
The group around Rooster splinters as his precarious grip on his home, and by extension his identity, loosens on April 23 (Shakespeare’s birth and death day, as well as Saint George’s Day).
Rooster’s persona shifts from oddball eccentric with a drug and drinking problem to something more mysterious, magical and frightening. The elements of magical realism that Butterworth weaves into the play add to its thematic ambition and fit right into the otherworldly set that director Mitchell Cushman and designer Nick Blais have created in the Streetcar Crowsnest theatre.
Butterworth’s skill with language, fusing the poetry so central to English history with, shall we say, more modern phraseology is a feat of artistry.
A runaway hit in England and on Broadway featuring Mark Rylance as Rooster, Jerusalem struck a chord with English audiences in a way that didn’t quite register with me. There were references, issues and implications I wasn’t picking up on, despite the fact that industrialization, a loss of connection to the land and the ostracization of the poor also apply to Toronto.
There was certainly a crackling excitement on opening night, earned for the scope and magnitude of such an indie production, expertly handled by Cushman, and not because it revealed hidden truths about English or Canadian life.
On the contrary, given the current context of Brexit, xenophobia and alt-right nationalism, the notion that there is any one English identity to be portrayed — especially that of a white, straight male with a monologue about how his ancient blood will survive in the Byron men — is startlingly unappealing.
Still, there are layers to Butterworth’s play that continue to reveal themselves a day after its sprawling three acts and two intermissions have finished. It’s a story that rightly feels expansive and unfinished.