The last time a new drama with this breadth of scope and ambition appeared on Broadway was seven years ago. That was Mr. Butterworth's 'Jerusalem,' in which a small-time, middle-aged country drug dealer (played by a monumental Mark Rylance) became a majestic emblem of an ancient, heroic England. With 'The Ferryman,' Mr. Butterworth is again assessing the chokehold of a nation's past on its present. But now it is Northern Ireland at the height of the politically fraught period known as the Troubles. (We hear radio reports of the of the dying Irish Republican hunger striker in the Maze prison.) And he mines the folksy clichés of Irish archetypes - as garrulous, drink-loving, pugilistic souls - to find the crueler patterns of a centuries-old cycle of violence and vengeance.