Listed in order, just scroll down to find them – Jerusalem

Jerusalem

This is Phaedra, a fifteen year old girl from the West Country, who opens the Jezz Butterworth play that was New Venture’s February production. She’s singing the hymn based on William Blake’s great poem, and the play’s a celebration of ‘Englishness’ – for better or worse. Phaedra’s dressed as some kind of fairy or woodland sprite, and in fact the whole play is set in a wood, somewhere just outside a small Wiltshire town, where Rooster Byron lives in a broken-down caravan.

The action takes place over one entire day in April: St George’s Day – so my lighting had to evoke the pinks of early dawn, through the brighter daylight of midday, and conclude with the amber rays of the setting sun. I also managed to suggest the light filtering through the trees above Simon Glazier’s wonderfully junk-filled set.

Rooster’s about to be evicted from the site, and the day began and ended with visits from a pair of Council officials.

I’m always fascinated by the names playwrights give their characters, and Phaedra in Greek mythology was the Queen who lusted after her stepson (it didn’t end well …) This Phaedra seems to have run off to the woods to seek the protection of Rooster, as her own stepfather seems like a very predatory individual indeed.

Director David Villiers got very powerful performances from his entire cast, with a lot of ensemble work as well as big speeches from the main characters.

Rooster surrounds himself with rather ‘lost’ young people, supplying them with drugs and booze, but he has an eight-year-old son, Marky, who visits the encampment with his mother in the play’s closing scenes.

*

*