'Come, you drunken spirits. Come, you battalions. You fields of ghosts who walk these green plains still. Come, you giants!'

When Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2009, it served notice of an astonishing development in the career of a writer whose debut, Mojo, had premiered on the same stage nearly fifteen years before.

Unearthing the mythic roots of contemporary English life, and featuring Mark Rylance in an indelible central performance as Johnny 'Rooster' Byron, the play transferred to the West End and then to Broadway, before returning to the West End in 2011. 'Storming... restores one's faith in the power of theatre' Independent. 'Unarguably one of the best dramas of the twenty-first century' Guardian.

Jerusalem was followed by the bewitching chamber play The River (Royal Court, 2012), a 'magnetically eerie, luminously beautiful psychodrama' Time Out. 'A delicately unfolding puzzle... all of it is wrapped in marvellous language... extraordinary' The Times.

This volume concludes with the multi-award-winning The Ferryman (Royal Court and West End, 2017; Broadway, 2018), an excavation of lives shattered by violence, set in a farmhouse in Northern Ireland in 1981. 'A richly absorbing and emotionally abundant play... an instant classic' Independent. 'A magnificent play that uses, brilliantly, the vitality of live theatre to express the deadly legacy of violence' Financial Times.

Also included here is the screenplay for the short film The Clear Road Ahead (2011), published here for the first time, and an edited transcript of a conversation between Butterworth and the playwright Simon Stephens.

About the Author
Jez Butterworth is one of the UK's leading playwrights. His plays include: Mojo (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1995; West End, 2013); The Night Heron (Royal Court, 2002); The Winterling (Royal Court, 2006); Parlour Song (Atlantic Theater, New York, 2008; Almeida Theatre, London, 2009); Jerusalem (Royal Court, 2009; West End, 2010; New York, 2011); The River (Royal Court, 2012); The Ferryman (Royal Court and West End, 2017) and The Hills of California (West End, 2024). Mojo won the George Devine Award, the Olivier Award for Best Comedy and the Writers' Guild, Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards for Most Promising Playwright. Jerusalem won the Best Play Award at the Critics' Circle, Evening Standard and WhatsOnStage.com Awards, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. The Ferryman won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play, and the Critics' Circle, Olivier and WhatsOnStage Awards for Best New Play, as well as the 2019 Tony Award for Best Play. His screenwriting credits include Fair Game (2010), Get On Up (2014), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Black Mass (2015), Spectre (2015), Ford v Ferrari (2019), and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). For TV, he created and wrote the comedy series Mammals for Amazon Studios, and created the historical fantasy drama Britannia for Sky and Amazon Prime. In 2007, he won the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2019 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.


Book Information
ISBN 9781848428676
Author Jez Butterworth
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Nick Hern Books
Publisher Nick Hern Books