JERUSALEM Closes Today

JERUSALEM has been nominated for six Tony Awards, including Best Play and Best Actor (Mark Rylance) and Best Featured Actor in a Play (Mackenzie Crook). The production is the winner of the NY Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play and star Mark Rylance has won NY Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards for his performance.

JERUSALEM, a new play by Jez Butterworth and starring Tony and Olivier Award-winner Mark Rylance opened April 21 at the Music Box Theatre (239 West 45th Street), in a production directed by Ian Rickson.

JERUSALEM originally opened at The Royal Court Theatre in July, 2009 with critics praising Jez Butterworth for his beautiful and comic elegy for a disappearing way of life in rural England and actor Mark Rylance, who was lauded as delivering one of the great stage performances of our time. The production played an extended sold out run at the Royal Court, before moving to the Apollo Theatre in the West End in January, 2010, where it received an unprecedented set of five-star reviews from 12 London newspapers.

JERUSALEM won the 2009 Evening Standard and London Critics' Circle for Best Play. Rylance won the 2010 Olivier and 2009 Evening Standard and London Critics' Circle Best Actor Awards for his performance.

The production stars Mark Rylance as Johnny ‘Rooster' Byron, Mackenzie Crook as Ginger John Gallagher, Jr. as Lee, Max Baker as Wesley, Alan David as The Professor, Aimeé-Ffion Edwards as Phaedra, Geraldine Hughes as Dawn, Danny Kirrane as Davey, Charlotte Mills as Tanya, Sarah Moyle as Ms. Fawcett, Molly Ranson as Pea, Harvey Robinson as Mr. Parsons and Barry Sloane as Troy Whitworth. Aiden Eyrick and Mark Page alternate in the role of Marky.

In the woods of South West England, Johnny ‘Rooster' Byron (Mark Rylance), former daredevil motorcyclist and modern-day Pied Piper, is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants to be taken to the country fair, a stepfather wants to give him a serious kicking and a motley crew of friends wants his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.

Mark Rylance is an award-winning actor in theatre, film and television. He won raves earlier this season for his performance as Valere in David Hirson's La Bête, on Broadway and in the West End, directed by Matthew Warchus. He won the 2008 Tony Award and Drama Desk for Best Actor in a Play and a Theatre World Award for his New York stage debut as Robert In Boeing-Boeing. He is a two-time winner of the Olivier Award for Johnny ‘Rooster' Byron in Jerusalem (2010) and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1993). He also won the 2010 Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards for Jerusalem.

Rylance was the Artistic Director for Shakespeare's Globe from 1996 to 2005 and also served as an Associate Actor of the RSC, acting in 48 plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Rylance's breakthrough role was Hamlet, which he played first at the Little Theatre of Milwaukee, followed by productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, A.R.T. in Cambridge and the Globe, amassing more performances in the role than any other actor in history, to date.

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