Land of hope and glory: Jez Butterworth's tragic landscapes

Abstract

ABSTRACTSteve Waters has suggested that climate change can be understood through the optic of classical tragedy. Building on Waters's interpretative frame, then, this article asserts that British society—a protagonist in the environmental drama—has authored its own downfall through destructive acts that were of our own making, though not necessarily our fault. Moreover, as we repeat, with the alacrity of the doomed, our fatal flaw—the catastrophe, it would seem—has become inevitable. Accepting and developing Waters's assertion, this article will consider notions of tragedy, folklore, nation and environment in relation to Jez Butterworth's 2009 play Jerusalem. The fall of great Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron in this piece signals a fall of heritage, of nation, of man. It is presumably, therefore, no accident that great Shakespearean Mark Rylance was cast as this play's bleak hero. Furthermore, if, as Adrian Poole has noted, tragedy stages ‘moments of crisis in a community's understanding of itself’, then Jerusalem stages the destabilization of space, place and history. The play replenishes traditional modes of theatre-making with urgency and integrity. In this way, it marks a countermove to the dominant (and vital) preoccupation within ‘political’ theatre practice in recent years with formal experiment. The article, then, not only considers what position this play occupies within the new topography of British theatre but also interrogates local tales, national politics and global disaster. In short, this article asks if Jerusalem stages the end of hope.