"Jerusalem" by Jez Butterworth.

Part of The Messy Unity Festival.

Nottingham Playhouse Neville Suite.

This is a cracker of a play; I last saw a production of it years ago at the Nottingham Lace Market Theatre, and lends itself so well to smaller, intimate stages.

"Jerusalem" has been described as "one of the greatest British plays of the 21st century" and "one of the best plays of all time". I think that I can readily second that opinion.

"Jerusalem" is a raucous, provocative piece of theatre that tells of a modern, mythic English hero: Johnny “Rooster” Byron. During the course of the play, Johnny tells tales, gets drunk, does drugs, dodges the authorities, and both charms and infuriates all that he meets. The play opens on the morning of the local county fair, and we discover that Johnny Byron is both the most and least popular man in town. The local authorities want to evict him, his son wants to spend the day with him, the town thug wants to teach him a lesson, and his group of friends want to party with him. Though he may be harried, harassed, bloodied, and bruised, Johnny is not a man to be beaten down.

The cast are excellent, and not afraid to make some noise and present a threatening atmosphere. The scene where the thugs come knocking at Rooster's caravan door to give him a pasting is very realistic, and although the pasting is done behind caravan doors, the aftermath is quite shocking. They, the cast members do not, quite literally, pull any punches for the sake of realism.

There are various members of the cast dependent on the specific performance, but this afternoon I saw the following......

Stef White (Jonny Byron), Hannah Dunlop (Ginger), Jas Nolan (Professor), Cariad Hargan-Hughes (Lee), Jessie-Mae Alonzo (Davey), Rosario Rodriguez-Fernando (Tanya), Emma Buesnel (Pea), Harrison Eyre (Wesley), Sydney Adams (Phaedra/Marky), Megan Goldstraw (Dawn), Scott McKenzie (Troy), Aminata Kanneh-Mason (Fawcett) and Ophelia Hibbert (Parsons).

This cast caused excitement, shock and fear; I actually found myself recoiling from some of the scenes due to the graphic actions. Now that, believe me is a good thing because it shows that, as a seasoned theatre goer, I can still be shocked emotionally by what I see on stage. Ultimately Stef, as Jonny, is hypnotising throughout with his stories, and especially in the final scenes of the play.

Directed by Nic Harvey, the production pulls no punches in harnessing the language and the physical aspects of this play. it also shows that Nic has complete confidence in his cast to deliver a realistic performance, and that is what I love about this show. I also love the fact that the real darker side is only hinted at, leaving you to make your own mind up about things that may, or may not have happened within this little commune. The comedy side is wonderfully done and comes naturally with this cast.

I did wonder about how they would get a caravan up to the Neville Studios, but the design and build for this main prop was carried out by Ryan Smith and provided all that a caravan needed to look like as well as being a practical prop.

The Lighting for this show, and the technical operation was by Laura Wolczyk and Brad Hunt.

So what is The Messy Unity Festival?

The Messy Unity Festival is the culmination of a year of work and training as part of the Nottingham Playhouse Homegrown programme. Young directors, writers and producers have worked intensively together, and with many industry professionals, to develop their craft, knowledge and industry readiness.

They were a very fluid bunch and the realism they projected was brilliant, it was almost like being a fly on the wall, and I loved just how natural, not only the acting, but the vocal delivery of the script was.

What a shame that this run was such a short one because with this quality of performance, it deserved to be witnessed by a larger audience. I'd definitely pay to see this cast perform "Jerusalem" over again.

"Jerusalem" is only here for a very short run and ends with a 7pm performance tonight.