JERUSALEM PRESS RELEASE

Jerusalem is a comic, contemporary vision of life in our green and pleasant land.  On St George's Day, the morning of the local county fair, Johnny Byron is a wanted man. The Council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants his dad to take him to the fair and Troy Whitworth wants to give him a serious kicking.
 
Jez Butterworth’s award-winning play returns to the West End following record-breaking sold-out runs at the Royal Court and the Apollo Theatres in 2009 and 2010 respectively.  Jerusalem is currently enjoying a critically acclaimed extended run at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway where it plays until 21 August 2011.  Jerusalem has now won over ten theatre awards internationally, culminating in the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Play going to Mark Rylance earlier this year.
 
The 2011 West End cast includes Mark Rylance (Johnny “Rooster” Byron) and Mackenzie Crook (Ginger) as well as Max Baker (Wesley), Alan David (The Professor), Aimeé-Ffion Edwards (Phaedra), Johnny Flynn (Lee), Geraldine Hughes (Dawn), Danny Kirrane (Davey), Charlotte Mills (Tanya), Sarah Moyle (Ms Fawcett) and Harvey Robinson (Mr Parsons).

Designs are by Ultz, with lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin, sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph and music by Stephen Warbeck.  Jerusalem is produced in the West End by Royal Court Theatre Productions and by Sonia Friedman Productions.

Multi award-winning actor Mark Rylance was last in the West End playing Valere in La Bête at the Comedy Theatre, a role he reprised on Broadway. Before the West End run of Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre, he was recently on stage playing Hamm in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame at the Duchess Theatre and Robert in Boeing-Boeing at the Comedy Theatre and on Broadway where he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. His other theatre work includes many productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Glasgow Citizens as well as True West for the Donmar Warehouse, Bloody Poetry for the Royal Court and The Maids for Shared Experience and Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing directed by Matthew Warchus, for which he won the Olivier Award for Best Actor.  As Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre his work as an actor included the title roles in Henry V and Hamlet as well as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and Olivia in Twelfth Night.  His film and television work includes The Other Boleyn Girl, Prospero’s Books, Angels and Insects, Leonardo and David Kelly in C4’s The Government Inspector for which he won the BAFTA Best Actor Award.  
 
Jez Butterworth’s first play Mojo opened at the Royal Court in 1995 and subsequently won five drama awards including the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards for Most Promising Playwright and the Olivier Award for Best Comedy.  He returned to the Royal Court in 2002 with The Night Heron and The Winterling in 2006.  His films Mojo, starring Harold Pinter, and Birthday Girl, starring Nicole Kidman, were both shown at the Venice Film Festival prior to general release.  In 2007 he received the E.M. Forster Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.  In 2009 his play Parlour Song received its British premiere at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson.  2010 saw the international release of his feature film Fair Game starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.
 
Ian Rickson’s most recent West End credits include Harold Pinter’s Betrayal which completes its run at the Comedy Theatre on 20 August and Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour.  He was Artistic Director of the Royal Court from 1998-2006 where his many productions included Krapp’s Last Tape which he also directed for BBC4, Fallout which he also directed as a film for Channel 4 and The Weir and Mojo both of which transferred to the West End and Broadway.  He has directed Jez Butterworth’s The Winterling, The Night Heron, Mojo and Parlour Song as well as Jerusalem.   For the National Theatre he has directed The Hothouse and The Day I Stood Still.