Charles Fisher

Take the title, for instance. In Britain, Jerusalem is a well-known hymn with lyrics from a short poem by William Blake that is based on a legend that Jesus Christ visited western England sometime during his "lost years". I certainly didn't know this, and it's not essential to enjoying the play, but it does add some depth to it.

The play takes place in western England in contemporary times on April 23rd, St. George's Day, a time for village fairs and traditional dances, celebrations of "England's green and pleasant Land" (from Blake's poem). St. George is the patron saint of England, for obscure reasons, since he never set foot in the country. (I think the English just liked the idea of a dragonslayer as their patron saint.)

Several of the characters in the play express nostalgia for the old Arthurian days, a time when giants built Stonehenge and set up the Standing Stones, when the island was crisscrossed by fairy ley lines, when people could trace their ancestry back to 1066 or even earlier, when an English forest was a wild, mysterious, and magical place of refuge and transformation.

But my, how degenerate it all has become. The whole play takes place in a patch of forest, but it is no forest of Arden. There is fairy dust here, but not the kind that Puck might sprinkle around. It's the kind that goes up your nose. It's still a place of refuge, but for misfits and drug addicts and teenage girls running away from their stepfathers. The occasional intrusions of lofty Shakespearean verbiage by a demented old professor serve to point out the debasement of all the rest of the language. How many times do you have to hear a wanker called a cunt?

Presiding over this little remnant of the English woods is Johnny Byron, a noble name if ever there was one. He goes by "Rooster," probably because he was once and still considers himself to be the cock of the walk. Thirty years ago, he was a daredevil motorcyclist, jumping buses at county fairs, but after having broken almost every bone and been declared dead once, he has staked out squatters' rights in a little clearing, set up his hovel, and survived on selling drugs and his own very rare blood.

The plot, what little there is of it, is that a middle-class housing development blatantly called "The New Estate" has been built right next to Rooster's claim. The noise from all-night parties at Rooster's and the lowlifes that hang around there are bugging the New Estate residents. For years the town council has been giving Rooster warnings to either shape up or ship out, and he has ignored them all. Tomorrow is D-day, though. They are going to evict him and demolish his house. It's the end of the line for Rooster and whatever it is that he symbolizes.

It's almost unthinkable that the playwright makes him a Christ figure. First, there's the title and the poem and legend it alludes to. Then there's the resurrection from the dead story. He has a small group of followers (thankfully, only six, not twelve) and is resolutely opposed to the town council, who might as well be the moneychangers in the temple or the Sanhedrin. He recites the long list of his ancestors, which is like the first chapter of Matthew, the genealogy of Jesus. The capper is that near the end of the play, an assailant burns the sign of the cross onto Rooster's cheek. But maybe I'm overthinking this. In any case, that's one of the good things about this play, it makes you think.

On the other hand, there are some not so great things about it. Like the first act, which is notable for two things: 1) The consuming, live on stage, of the most repulsive breakfast I have ever seen; and 2) being otherwise almost totally unnecessary. Butterworth is in love with his own logorrhea. The play is never boring, but it's too long at over three hours (with two short intermissions). If this sounds like a contradiction, that's par for the course with this play. The dialogue is almost always entertaining because of its raunchiness, but we got the point an hour ago. The few serious scenes are the wheat, and much of the rest is chaff.

But those serious scenes make the play worth seeing. When Rooster talks to his son or to his son's mother or to an abusive stepfather, you see how good a writer Butterworth can be. And the final scenes are really effective. Overall, I'm not as enamored of this play as I thought I would be, but I'm definitely glad I saw it. I've heard that it's better the second time around, but since most of us are only going to see it once, that's what this review is based on.

The Vortex gives it an excellent production, directed by Marty Epstein, in all respects except one: The accents are all over the place. Depending on who's talking, you find yourself on different continents. The major characters do quite well (three of them are from the UK, so they've got it made), but some of the others are just not in England.

The set by Shannon Flynn, props by Claudia Mathes and Lena Baxley, costumes by Kip Caswell, lighting by Chris Duncan and Nikki Nevitt, and sound by Ryan Maeker and Steven Maurer, all are top-notch. Of the supporting cast, Micah McCoy, Ed Chavez, Colleen McClure, Colin Morgan, Eliot Stenzel and Kristín Hansen are very good, as always. It's a shame that some of them have only a few minutes onstage. Matthew Tyrrell is a good little actor already at 11 years old. Mark Hisler and Aaron Worley, unfortunately, are saddled with thankless roles.

The play, of course, belongs to Rooster, and here he is perfectly embodied by Charles Fisher, finally getting the big showy part that he deserves. He pulls it off with panache. It takes an awful lot of dedication to drink that god-awful "breakfast" at every show, but he's that kind of actor. See for yourself.

Jerusalem, a play by Jez Butterworth, directed by Marty Epstein, is being performed at the Vortex Theatre in Albuquerque through March 2, 2014. Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30, Sundays at 2:00. Info at vortexabq.org or 505-247-8600.

Photo: Alan Mitchell Photography

--Dean Yannias