The roles of their lives

For Mark Rylance, it’s Rooster in Jerusalem. For Alison Steadman, it’s Bev in Abigail’s Party … leading actors on the parts they will never escape Mark Rylance Plays Johnny “Rooster” Byron in Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, which opened at the Royal Court in 2009 and travelled to Broadway. It has just returned to London, where it is showing at the Apollo theatre in the West End. Jerusalem first came to me in 2003, when I was too busy running the Globe. Back then it was called St George’s Day. The pages were written with an old typewriter and it was very raw, so different to anything else. Sometimes, instead of characters’ names, there was just pages of dialogue. It reminded me of how much as a kid I had resonated with adults outside of society, how much I liked their language and stories. I got busy with other projects and they saw other actors. When the Royal Court asked me again, I wasn’t quite sure. Because I’d had this surprising success with Boeing Boeing , people were amazed that I was committing to an unknown play at the Court. It was rough and unwieldy. Even

Posted by on October 23, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.