“a formidable endeavour, which That Lot have been ambitious in undertaking”
New London theatre company, That Lot, along with director Kara M. Tyler, have taken on Jez Butterworth’s Mojo for their debut production. Butterworth’s first play, a dark gangster comedy which premiered at the Royal Court in 1995, is an exceedingly challenging piece which That Lot have been bold in tackling, but haven’t quite managed to pin down.
The script takes us to 1950s Soho. It’s a world of crime, drugs, and rock & roll. Pill-popping gangsters Potts (Louis Cummings), Sweets (Brad Leigh), and Skinny (Thao Nguyen) struggle to cope when second-in-command Mickey (Adam Bloom) announces their boss, Ezra, is dead. Cut in half and delivered to them in rubbish bins. The play follows the panicking of Sid, Sweets, and Skinny, who assume they’re next, and the power struggle between Mickey and Baby (Oliver Parnell), Ezra’s son, who despite being fairly unhinged, is heir to the gang and his father’s nightclub.
One of the reasons Mojo is so difficult, is it contains very little plot. The action, until the very end, is almost exclusively limited to the characters hiding out in the nightclub. Only the most incisively nuanced characterisation and expertly timed dialogue will keep an audience invested. It’s a daunting task even for the most seasoned professionals, and unfortunately the performances here don’t bring the power and maturity required to drive the play alone. The two-hour runtime makes its length felt, and I wasn’t entirely surprised to spot someone near me sleeping through the second act.
Leigh (Sweets) stands out for a first-rate performance as the pilled-up, dim-witted stooge, and Parnell (Baby) has an admirably easy confidence. However, Cummings (Potts), and Bloom (Mickey) seem less comfortable in their roles. Holes in the movement direction often leave Bloom standing awkwardly while others talk around him, further impeding the weight and dominance lacking from the performance. Nguyen (Skinny) is frequently off-tempo with his lines.
Timing is a blanket issue throughout. Mojo is fast-paced and rhythmic. The actors struggle to bounce the lines between them, and never really manage to hit a stride. The comedy in particular suffers as a result. For a play billed as a black comedy, this performance was noticeably short on laughs. Following the rocky first act, I overheard someone comment ‘tough crowd’, although of course the opposite is true of an opening night audience filled with friends and supporters.
All revivals shoulder the burden of relevance. What does a play already in the shadow of Mamet, Pinter, and Tarantino in 1995, and since buried by countless others, have to say to a 2018 audience? The issue of toxic masculinity feels like it’s been left unmined. Baby’s history of sexual abuse is muted. The statement That Lot and Tyler are making with this production doesn’t come through.
Mojo is a formidable endeavour, which That Lot have been ambitious in undertaking. There is genuinely good effort here, but this uneven production needs further development to find its mojo.
“The air is also blue with some magnificently filthy language, imbuing the evening with an irresistibly sinuous rawness”
Jez Butterworth’s ‘Jerusalem’ is a great swaggering blast of a play, set in the fictional Wiltshire village of Flintock on St George’s Day. Taking its title as much from William Blake’s ironic poem (‘was Jerusalem builded here among those dark, Satanic mills?’) as from its use by Parry as a patriotic hymn, Butterworth tackles head-on the idea of Englishness. He comes up with some answers that may surprise more than one regular theatregoer at Newbury’s dreamy Watermill theatre, which is nestled in bucolic woods and fields not far from those the play depicts.
At the heart of the play is the larger than life character of Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, (Jasper Britton, ex-RSC) an exuberantly crowing cock-of-the-walk who has lived for decades in a semi-derelict caravan deep in the woods. He’s a spinner of the most fantastic yarns. Born by immaculate conception with a full set of teeth, a daredevil with magic blood in his veins, he’s a man made of rock who has heard the trees sing.
But this is no enchanted forest from a Midsummer Night. Byron is also a drug pusher and a drunk who has been banned from every pub for his brawling. His life is a ‘Bucolic, Alcoholic Frolic.’ Around him cluster half a dozen or so wasted, washed-up kids, half-believing his wild stories, but quick to turn on him when he’s down. A kind of mythic haze hangs over the grimy clearing where Byron’s caravan is slowly mouldering into the ground in Frankie Bradshaw’s compelling set. The air is also blue with some magnificently filthy language, imbuing the evening with an irresistibly sinuous rawness. This is an inspired production that thanks to Lisa Blair’s excellent direction seems to grow out of the very earth the Watermill theatre stands on.
As Byron, Britton has made the part his own in a way that stands apart from Mark Rylance’s much-praised interpretation at the play’s Royal Court premiere. Britton is a colossal figure, bursting with fierce energy, mired in filth but brilliant with quick wit that lights up the theatre. The same quick-fire vitality marks the performances of several of Rooster Byron’s acolytes. Peter Caulfield as Ginger is one of the ‘Lost Boys’ – gawky and wasted, never growing up, always hoping for a break that he knows in his heart will never come. As Lee, Sam Swann has a touching innocence that’s just right for the part of the kid who thinks he’s heading to a better life tomorrow. Santino Smith is funny and compelling as Davey who has never seen the point of other counties. ‘I leave Wiltshire, my ears pop.’ Richard Evans makes the professor ethereal and vulnerable, making a vivid connection with the language of enchantment in the literature and lyrics he quotes. Robert Fitch gives a raw and edgy performance as Wesley, the hopeless morris-dancing publican who’ll take a line from Rooster and then ban him from his pub. Adam Burton, Rebecca Lee, Natalie Walter and an alternating trio of child actors as Marky all make excellent contributions to this brilliant show. Dialect coach Elspeth Morrison deserves a special mention for keeping the cast (mostly) on track in a broad Wiltshire accent.
This wonderfully involving three-act play opens with Nenda Neurer as Phaedra singing ‘Jerusalem’ with a kind of sweetly knowing innocence. What follows is both a compelling story but also a brilliantly crafted meditation on what it is to be of an ancient land where continuity and chaos, truth and fiction, hope and despair are all wrapped up into an enthralling mixture.
The Watermill Theatre’s ‘Jerusalem’ continues to Saturday 21 July. Lighting by Christopher Nairne, Sound and music, Tom Attwood, Paul Benzing, fight director.
