Preview: Jerusalem

I read this play back in 2016, just after the Brexit vote, and we’ve been waiting for the rights ever since. It is brilliantly written – as expected from Jez Butterworth. As West End tickets were so hard to come by, I thought the only way to actually guarantee seeing this play was to do it ourselves.

The play centres around Johnny Byron, an ex-daredevil who has found himself living literally on the edge of society. He’s a pied piper character who is running out of luck.

He’s surrounded by a group of young hangers on, a frustrated ex-partner and a Morris dancing publican. There’s the ominous shadow of the council officers wanting to evict him, and an old foe with a very current score to settle.

There’s so much going on. It’s about little Britain, regeneration, people being stuck in the same place, fear of change, what home means, and lots of wonderful English history and traditions.

We’ve banned talk of the West End show. Neither I nor Carole (our Assistant Director and designer) have seen it, so we’re working through the text as a team and mining the humour and clues about the characters together.

We’ve asked the team to not be influenced by what’s gone before. There’s no joy in just regurgitating or trying to mimic anyone else. As always with acting you have to find the character’s truth and play it.

We’re about halfway through and generally rehearsals go like this. Everyone gets a beer in, some people put bells on their legs and within 20 minutes there’s usually been a fit of giggles or two.

Bob shows us his latest moves. Tom has a ciggie. Dean pops in and scares everyone. Sometimes we sing a bit. Then I tell everyone they are doing brilliantly but they should be off book by now and they all go and get another beer.

Sweary, very sweary.

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