Philosophy in action

Jerusalem
Royal Court

Dreams of Violence
Soho

Lock him up. On paper, the central character of Jez Butterworth’s new play looks like a worthless nuisance, a menace to society. Rooster Byron lives in a derelict caravan and earns cash by supplying children with controlled drugs. He’s a scroundrel, a drunkard, a liar, a sponger, a womaniser, an absentee father, possibly a burglar too. He’s also a charmer, a spinner of yarns, a laugh. The action takes place on St George’s day and Rooster’s band of followers are preparing to resist the council’s efforts to evict him and throw him in jail. Meanwhile, a 15-year-old girl has gone missing and her distraught father (a former member of Rooster’s gang) is convinced Rooster knows her whereabouts.

With this utterly captivating and completely original work of art Jez Butterworth has, apparently from nowhere, created a new mythic archetype, a Blakeian super-hero whose roots lie deep in England’s past but whose world-outlook is freshly minted. Rooster is full of gags and stories. He used to perform motorcycle stunts in the 1980s until the killjoys outlawed ‘daredevilling’. Once he met the giant who built Stonehenge, he tells us. Another time he was kidnapped by Nigerian traffic wardens but after refusing food for a week — ‘I got thinner and thinner and the ropes loosened’ — he got away by escaping up a chimney. Every element in this amazingly witty script is weird, captivating and poetic. As the play develops, the themes become clearer and starker and what emerges is a terrifying comedy about xenophobia, child abuse and tribal violence. Rooster is more than just a character in a drama. Like Mark Antony or Hamlet, he’s a philosophy in action. ‘Cheat, steal, fight to the death.