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      Interview: How To Fill A Space Like The Space

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      Author: Everything Theatre

      in Features and Interviews, Podcasts, Runn Radio interview

      4 May 2022

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      Adam Hemming on running The Space Arts Centre

      This week‘s guest on our Runn Radio show was Adam Hemming, the Artistic Director of The Space Arts Centre. Adam has worked at the Space for 18 years, so has a strong record of supporting London’s fringe theatre scene. It’s a venue we love reviewing at, due to its range of shows and risk taking that can result in some amazing surprises in their shows.

      Adam hosts two of his own podcasts, which we can highly recommend. They are:

      Space Chats features interviews with shows that are performing at The Space. You can find the series on Spotify here.

      TV DNA is a podcast, as the title suggests, that talks about TV. You can find that on Spotify here. More

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      ‘Wish You Were Here’ Review: The Saga of Female Friendship

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      Sanaz Toossi’s new play follows a group of five women in Iran as they and their friendships change against the backdrop of marriages and revolution.The five Iranian women of “Wish You Were Here,” which opened on Tuesday night at Playwrights Horizons, joke about sex and their bodies. They file one another’s toenails and lick their cheeks with a disarming degree of comfort. And they show off their psychic connections by playing rounds of “What am I thinking?”Yet these friends can also be vicious, mocking one another with the targeted hits of a loved one who knows where to stick the knife.The playwright Sanaz Toossi drops in on this group in 10 scenes — one for almost every year from 1978 to 1991, a period encompassing the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the country’s steps toward economic stability. Pushing that upheaval somewhat awkwardly to the background, Toossi focuses instead on the women and how their relationships to one another — and to themselves — change with marriages, deaths and sudden departures. Their friendship is its own saga of constantly fluctuating degrees of intimacy and friction.We meet the women at around 20 years old, all preparing for a wedding in a living room in Karaj, Iran: Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) is the bride, wearing a snowy-white dune of lace and tulle, “big in a way that sort of feels humiliating,” according to the neurotic Shideh (Artemis Pebdani). Rana (Nazanin Nour), a rambunctious firecracker still dressed in her red silk pajamas, promises never to get married or have kids. Same goes for the churlish, eye-rolling Nazanin (Marjan Neshat), who’s aiming for an engineering degree. Zari (Nikki Massoud), carelessly reposed over a very 1970s floral couch, gives the impression of a naïve youth. These women taunt and prod one another, their insecurities and fears often colliding like bumper cars at a carnival.Though the pure Salme, who faithfully prays for what she believes is the best for her friends — a husband and children for Nazanin, admission into an American medical school for Shideh — seems like she’ll be our main protagonist in the beginning, that’s quickly shown to not be the case. Nazanin becomes the anchor of every scene, even as the other women enter and exit, though, structurally, the play hadn’t previously indicated that would be the case.Gaye Taylor Upchurch’s direction tries to bring out the color of these women’s personalities but collides with the limits of the script, which, squeezing 13 years into a 100-minute run, struggles to focus its lens and communicate the subtle dynamics among the friends. The characters lack context, beyond the very occasional mention of a fiancé or child, and so their actions — which they always make outside of the isolation of this one living room — lack stakes. The sequence of marriages and the not-so-distant sirens of war turn up as transparent markers of progress, but they never believably penetrate the tiny bubble of time and space where these characters live.Arnulfo Maldonado opts for a kitschy set of a living room with patterned rugs, pink and beige walls and ornate Iranian furniture, though the stage remains oddly static even as the production moves through different living rooms across 13 years of different fashions, as beautifully captured in Sarah Laux’s costume design, from the pastry-pouf wedding dress and flirty bridesmaids dresses of the ’70s to a denim maxi skirt in the ’80s. Reza Behjat’s lighting design gracefully captures the sunrises and sunsets of the passing years.Still, each of the actresses gives an expert performance. Pebdani, who has played one of my favorite recurring characters on the comedy series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” is just as funny here as Shideh, though she has minimal scenes and little to work with. Nour and Radja bring appropriate exuberance and softness, respectively, to their characters, and in Zari, Massoud presents an arc from guilelessness to self-awareness and maturity.Reuniting for Nazanin’s wedding, from left: Shideh (Pebdani), Salme (Radja) and Neshat (Nazanin). Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNeshat, who provided profoundly expansive performances in another recent Playwrights production, “Selling Kabul,” and as the complexly drawn Toefl teacher in “English,” continues her streak of rich, marrow-deep character portrayals. With each of her characters, Nazarin included, Neshat gradually sheds their armors of self-possession and strength, their reserve and resolve, to reveal how fragile, scared and insecure they truly are. In other words, Neshat transforms empathy into a dramatic act we witness, in real time, on the stage.With her last produced work, the Atlantic and Roundabout theater companies’ scintillating production of “English” from February, Toossi accomplished wonders with her language; she offered an examination of national identity, othering and the construction of a private and public self all within the subtle discussions of phonetics, pronunciation and syntax in an English language class in Iran. There are glimmers of that work here, too, as in the exquisite poetry of the final scene. (“She will never know how fast this earth can spin underneath you,” one character, now an American expat, swears in a monologue about her future daughter. “How one day you can have a home, and the next, as you are hurtling through the air, you will have to vanquish home.”)Even as “Wish You Were Here” circles around themes of the female body and national politics, aiming to land somewhere with a statement, it constantly backs away. In a playwright note, Toossi asks: “Doesn’t every play exist within a set of politics? Must a play be political if the events of the play are affected by the politics of the play’s setting? Isn’t every play political? I can’t decide.” Unfortunately, despite the successes of the production, the playwright’s indecision creeps through.It’s exciting to see a portrayal of the complexity of female friendships, including both the niceties and the petty rivalries alike. It’s something I’ve been considering a lot lately in conversations with my female friends — how we have shaped and been shaped by one another, how we’ve grown into or outgrown the roles we’ve been assigned in each other’s lives. There’s so much to appreciate and even more to explore here, within the confidences of rowdy, supportive, spiteful women; I just wish we’d have witnessed it onstage.Wish You Were HereThrough May 29 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      ‘For Colored Girls’ to Close on Broadway, Reflecting Tough Season

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      The revival, directed by Camille A. Brown, received strong reviews but struggled to attract audiences and overcome challenges posed by Covid.A much-praised revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” Ntozake Shange’s classic choreopoem, will close later this month after struggling to find an audience during a tumultuous Broadway season.The show’s producers said Tuesday that the final performance would be May 22, just a month after opening and three months earlier than planned.The closing reflects the challenges of this unusual Broadway season — the first since the pandemic shutdown — when tourism remains down, coronavirus cases are a constant complication, and a large number of shows opened at the same time, making it difficult for any one of them to break out.“For Colored Girls” won strong reviews — in The New York Times, the critic Laura Collins-Hughes deemed it “thrilling and exuberant” — but it has struggled from the get-go; last week, which was its best yet, it grossed $250,000. The show’s audiences, at the Booth Theater, were just 51 percent full, and the average ticket price was $79.“Our numbers were much lower than those rave reviews would justify,” said Nelle Nugent, one of the play’s lead producers. “There are so many choices this season, which is very exciting, but there’s a lot of inventory, and the shows with major stars are doing better. I think there’s also a confusion in the public’s mind about safety.”“For Colored Girls,” a series of monologues about the experiences of Black women set to dance and song, first arrived on Broadway in 1976, and was a hit, running for 22 months. It has been adapted for film and television, and influenced many theater makers.In 2019, the year after Shange’s death, an Off Broadway revival was staged at the Public Theater, directed by Leah C. Gardiner and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. The success of that project led to the Broadway revival, which Brown directed and choreographed.This production, like many others, has been challenged by the coronavirus pandemic — three of the cast members have been out in recent days. And the pandemic took a toll in other ways, as well. “It affected us an extraordinary amount, including the delay of almost two years coming out of the Public, so the momentum we had had dissipated,” Nugent said.In a joint interview, Nugent and Ron Simons, also a lead producer, attributed the closing to a number of factors, including not only the high volume of shows opening on Broadway this spring and the lingering effects of the pandemic, but also a delay in the announcement of Tony nominations, the presence of scaffolding around their theater, and misunderstandings about what their show is.“There is a slight dampening effect for us because of the title — when you read ‘suicide,’ people think it’s going to be a somber play, and not enjoyable,” Simons said. “But it’s not just a play that deals with dark subjects. The show ends on a high note of celebration.”Nugent and Simons said they were hopeful that, by announcing a closing date, audiences would now flock to the show, and said they were open to extending it if there were a sudden surge of interest. Absent that, they said, it would remain necessary to close the show, which was capitalized for $4.85 million. “The decision ultimately is based on economics,” Simons said.“For Colored Girls” is the second Broadway show to announce an unplanned closing this spring because of weak sales. A stage adaptation of “The Little Prince,” which began previews March 29 and opened April 11, announced last week that it would close May 8. More

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      David Birney, Who Starred on TV’s ‘Bridget Loves Bernie,’ Dies at 83

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      The sitcom, about an interfaith marriage, drew criticism from Jewish groups and was canceled after one season. He fared better onstage than in television.David Birney, a classically trained theater actor who found success on the stage, including on Broadway, but who was best known for his role in “Bridget Loves Bernie” — a short-lived sitcom about an interfaith marriage in which he starred opposite his future wife, Meredith Baxter — died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said Michele Roberge, who said she was his life partner.Mr. Birney had been in a handful of television series and movies when he was cast in 1972 as Bernie Steinberg, a Jewish taxicab driver and struggling writer. Ms. Baxter played Bridget Fitzgerald, a schoolteacher from a wealthy Roman Catholic family.“This is not a message show,” Mr. Birney, who was Irish American, said during an interview with The Kansas City Star before the series’s debut. “It’s not even an idea show.”CBS gave it a plum time slot between “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on Saturday night; it consistently finished among the top 10 programs in prime time and was the highest rated new series of the 1972-73 season.But it attracted criticism from a broad spectrum of Jewish groups, which objected chiefly to its treatment of intermarriage between Jews and Christians as a positive outcome and complained that it used Jewish stereotypes. CBS publicly played down the criticism but, without an explanation, canceled “Bridget Loves Bernie” after 24 episodes.“One segment of the protesters is truly concerned about the dilution of their faith,” Mr. Birney told The Daily News several months after the cancellation. “But intermarriage is on the rise, nevertheless. The threat doesn’t come from a harmless show such as ours, but from within.”Mr. Birney and Ms. Baxter married in 1974.In 1976, Mr. Birney received acclaim for playing John Quincy Adams in the public television production of “The Adams Chronicles.” Later that year, he was hired to play Frank Serpico, the corruption-fighting New York City detective, in an NBC series adapted from the Sidney Lumet movie “Serpico” (1973), which had earned Al Pacino an Oscar nomination for best actor.Mr. Birney was cast in the role on the strength of his work playing an officer in two episodes of “Police Story,” another NBC series. But “Serpico” was canceled after less than a full season. Mr. Birney and Meredith Baxter in an episode of “Bridget Loves Bernie,” a short-lived CBS sitcom about an interfaith marriage. Jewish groups were critical of it. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Edwin Birney was born on April 23, 1939, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Cleveland. His father, Edwin, was an F.B.I. agent, and his mother, Jeanne (McGee) Birney, was a homemaker and later a real estate agent.After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College in 1961, Mr. Birney turned down a scholarship from Stanford Law School and instead chose to study theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a master’s degree a year later. In the Army, he was part of a program called the Showmobile, which entertained at military bases in the United States.Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.“Mr. Birney had a cock sparrow arrogance,” Clive Barnes wrote in his review in The New York Times, “that mixture of both confidence and certainty that seemed perfectly right.”At the opening of “Playboy,” the Clancy Brothers, the popular Irish singing group that Mr. Birney had befriended at a Manhattan bar, sat in the front row.“They had their Irish sweaters on,” Ms. Roberge said in a phone interview, “and their arms crossed as if to say, Come on, show us what you’ve got.”Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.He also adapted some of Mark Twain’s short stories into a play, “The Diaries of Adam and Eve,” which he often performed and directed. In 1989, he starred in one of the productions, with Ms. Baxter, for American Playhouse on PBS.The couple divorced that year. In 2011, she wrote in her book, “Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering,” that Mr. Birney had been abusive during their marriage. He denied her accusation, calling it an “appalling abuse of the truth.”One of Mr. Birney’s biggest successes on television was a starring role as a doctor in the first season of the medical dramedy “St. Elsewhere.” But as the second season approached, he left the series because of his commitment on Broadway to “Amadeus.”He continued to work in television through 2007, when he was a guest on the police procedural “Without a Trace.”In addition to Ms. Roberge, Mr. Birney is survived by his children with Ms. Baxter, his daughters Kate and Mollie Birney and a son, Peter Baxter; a stepdaughter, Eva Bush, and a stepson, Ted Bush, Ms. Baxter’s children from a previous marriage; two grandchildren; and his brothers, Glenn and Gregory. Another marriage, to Mary Concannon, also ended in divorce. More

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      Review: Making a Beautiful ‘Case for the Existence of God’

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      Samuel D. Hunter’s heartbreaking new play argues for hope even in the face of extreme disappointment.About a third of the way through “A Case for the Existence of God,” Samuel D. Hunter’s must-see heartbreaker of a play, one character, Ryan, tells the other one, Keith, “I think we share a specific kind of sadness.”The insight would seem almost comically unlikely if it came any sooner. Ryan (Will Brill) has been introduced to us as a feckless screw-up: undereducated, hopeless with money, scraping by at a yogurt plant. Though he claims to have written a novella, he does not know what “harrowing” means.He would seem to have nothing in common with Keith (Kyle Beltran), an uptight, button-down professional who uses the word casually. Financially savvy and culturally sophisticated, Keith has a dual degree in Early Music and English. For fun he listens to motets.That Ryan is white and straight, and Keith is Black and gay, also comes into it. You could not make more neatly matched opposites if you were designing a new kind of magnet.But by the time Ryan blurts out to Keith what he sees as their fundamental connection, Hunter’s meticulous plotting has led us to the same conclusion. We are somehow ready to understand that the unlikely statement is both powerfully true and, perhaps, universal. The question is: What is the purpose of a sadness you can share but not escape?“A Case for the Existence of God,” which opened on Monday in a Signature Theater production directed exquisitely by David Cromer, is another of Hunter’s public explorations of his own private Idaho: a post-boom, existential vastness in which emotional and economic collapse are conjoined. Earlier plays set in Lewiston, Boise, Pocatello and others have dealt with people failing to thrive in the barrenness of Costcos, Hobby Lobbys and sub-Olive Garden restaurants.And though “A Case” makes the connection between personal and societal calamity more explicit than ever — can it be just an accident that it’s set in Twin Falls? — it may also be the purest example yet of Hunter’s approach to playwriting as an experiment in empathy.Ryan is the primary beneficiary of that experiment here. Except for his being human, there is nothing huge about him, either heroic or horrendous, that would suggest the makings of a typical main character. Indeed, he has come to Keith, a mortgage broker, with only a very small dream in his pocket: to repurchase 12 acres of property that once belonged to his family. By making a home there, he hopes to show the courts considering his divorce from his wife that he is stable enough to share custody of their 15-month-old daughter.While Brill, left, comes to Beltran to talk about a mortgage, the pair bond as nervous fathers of young daughters.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIf Ryan is terrified of losing his child, Keith’s version of the same fear comes from a very different source. As the play begins, he has for more than three years been trying to become a father, first through surrogacy and, when that failed, through foster care leading to adoption. The girl eventually placed with him is about the same age as Ryan’s — the men met at their daughters’ day care — but the threat to Keith is entirely external. A relative of the birth mother has, at the last minute, expressed interest in raising the child herself.The two processes depicted in the play — getting a loan, adopting a child — turn out to be similar, at least for men who, for different reasons, are outsiders to the systems that control their fate. Though Ryan feels that “money is the only real permission I have to be alive,” he is so naïve about how it works, never having had any, that he suggests sending photos to potential lenders to show he’s a “decent guy.” Keith has likewise staked his life’s happiness — his very legitimacy — on institutions that find single men, let alone gay ones, inherently unworthy.As a parent by adoption myself, I have to say that the adoption plot felt absolutely authentic in a way it rarely does in plays. Less so the banking plot; I’ve been through that, too. Only a loan shark would dream of risking a dime on Ryan, as Keith would instantly have known.But Hunter is too complex a playwright to let us bask for long in the procedural aspects of the story anyway — or, for that matter, in the awkwardly growing bond between the men. He is more interested in the misalignment of their needs and abilities; as is nearly inevitable for people damaged in different ways, they can help each other only so much. When you want Keith to be gentle, he lashes out; when you want Ryan to face facts, he can’t. And the world is neither man’s friend.Or is it, eventually? Though the “case” of the title is not proved, it is argued beautifully by the surprising resolution, which suggests that failure may not be the end of the story. That thin thread of optimism depends on the extreme delicacy of Cromer’s production to produce its outsize effect. Most of the play moves in drolly inconclusive eddies of suppressed feeling, scene flowing into scene without pause or signpost, until, having pulled back from emotion for so long, it can’t be contained any longer. Even then, Cromer puts the lid back on as soon as possible; when Keith has a panic attack, why should we get a catharsis?Arnulfo Maldonado’s set confines the actors to a cramped cubicle, surrounded by the vastness of the dark stage, for most of the play.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe design follows accordingly. The set, by Arnulfo Maldonado, depicts the cramped cubicle Keith occupies at his brokerage; framed like a cell by the vastness of the Pershing Square Signature Center stage, it could induce a panic attack all by itself. The men never even get out of their chairs until the play suddenly evolves near the end, at which point the set evolves too, producing an almost geological change in atmosphere. The costumes by Brenda Abbandandolo, lighting by Tyler Micoleau and sound by Christopher Darbassie are equally subtle and affecting.The same can be said for Brill and Beltran, always fine on their own but never better and more in sync with an acting partner than here. Perhaps only when people are so comfortable together (the actors were roommates at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama) can discomfort be played and transcended so authentically. Even negotiating Hunter’s slight writerly tics — the way he sometimes spins gears to delay the next development — they backfill each moment with a depth of feeling that gives a quiet play, in many ways a comedy, the density of tragedy.It’s the kind of tragedy, though, that hurts by means of hope, like land broken up to take seeds. If Ryan began the play not knowing that’s what “harrowing” means, he soon learns — as do we.A Case for the Existence of GodThrough May 15 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan; signaturetheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Wendell Pierce to Star in ‘Death of a Salesman’ on Broadway

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      The production, also starring Sharon D Clarke and featuring André De Shields, will arrive some time next season.Wendell Pierce is ready for another run as Willy Loman.The American actor, best known for his work in “The Wire,” first took on the titanic title role in “Death of a Salesman” in London in 2019, and even then he hungered to bring the performance to New York.Now he’ll get that chance: A group of producers announced Monday that they would transfer the London production to Broadway next season.Pierce will once again star opposite Sharon D Clarke, a British actress who wowed critics and audiences in New York this season with her star turn in a revival of the musical “Caroline, or Change.” Pierce and Clarke played the husband and wife, Willy and Linda Loman, at the Young Vic in London, and then in the West End; Clarke won an Olivier Award as best actress.“I have waited for this moment for a long time — I’m so excited to do this classic American play and join the fraternity of artists who have brought it to life,” Pierce said in a telephone interview. He called the role “the American Hamlet,” and said he had seen many of the best-known performances — Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy and Philip Seymour Hoffman onstage, as well as Fredric March and Lee J. Cobb on film. “It will challenge me, not just as an artist but as a man, to take the time to be self-reflective and consider all the themes in this play: Are my best days behind me? Where have I lost hope? What do I want to leave behind? That’s a worthwhile journey of self-reflection to go on.”“Death of a Salesman,” often regarded as one of the greatest American plays, is about a traveling salesman whose career, and mental state, are falling apart. The play, by Arthur Miller, opened on Broadway in 1949 and won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play; it has been revived on Broadway four times, winning a slew of Tony Awards over the years.This latest production, with the blessing of the Miller estate, offers a new take on the play’s inherent tensions by portraying the Loman family as African American and the other characters (co-workers, neighbors and a love interest) as white.André De Shields, who this month wraps up his Tony-winning run as Hermes in “Hadestown,” will join the cast as Willy’s deceased brother, Ben. And Khris Davis (“Sweat”) will play Biff, one of the Lomans’ two sons.The Broadway production will be directed by Miranda Cromwell, who in London directed it alongside Marianne Elliott. Elliott will remain with the show as a producer.Cromwell, in an interview, said “it’s the same production, but some things will shift as we refine it.” She also said that, as a mixed-race woman, “there are elements of my lived experience that I’ve brought to the production.”She added: “So many of the elements of the play are fundamentally questioning of the American dream, and when you put that through the perspective of the Black experience, that enriches it — the obstacles are harder, and the stakes become higher through this lens.”The revival will be produced by Cindy Tolan, best known as a casting director; Elliott & Harper Productions, which is Elliott’s production company with Chris Harper; and Kwame Kwei-Armah, who is the artistic director of the Young Vic.The producer Scott Rudin had previously been planning to bring a “Salesman” revival to Broadway starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf; he stopped working as a producer after being criticized for the way he treated others, and the team behind the London revival was able to pick up the rights to bring their production to Broadway. More

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      On the Scene: Hillary Clinton at ‘Suffs’

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      On the Scene: Hillary Clinton at ‘Suffs’Jennifer Schuessler�� Reporting from the Public TheaterSara Krulwich/The New York Times“Suffs,” written by Shaina Taub, covers the final years of the fight for the 19th Amendment, which passed in 1920. As the lights dimmed, the cast, costumed as jeering men, filed onstage for “Watch Out for the Suffragette!,” a vaudeville-style number inspired by real anti-suffrage songs. More

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      Review: In ‘Jerusalem,’ a Once-in-a-Lifetime Performance, Again

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      Mark Rylance is back in a role that won him a Tony more than a decade ago. But this London production isn’t just coasting on past kudos.LONDON — There’s mighty, and then there’s Mark Rylance in “Jerusalem,” a performance so powerfully connected to its part that it feels almost superhuman. That’s as it should be for a play about a larger-than-life character named Johnny Byron, who demands an entirely fearless actor, and has one in Rylance.None of this will surprise those familiar with this play by Jez Butterworth, which premiered with Rylance in the lead role at the Royal Court here in 2009; two years later, it transferred to Broadway and won Rylance the second of three Tony Awards. In a thrilling revival that opened Thursday at the Apollo Theater (running through Aug. 7), everything feels enriched by time.Now 62, Rylance is considerably older than a man described in the text as “about 50.” But such is this actor’s boundless energy and enthusiasm that you can imagine him returning to the role again and again: Johnny defies all conventions, including those of age, and so does a wildly versatile actor who approaches this societal rebel as a kindred spirit.The creative team, headed by Ian Rickson, the most empathic of directors, is the same as it was in 2009. To this run’s credit, it is no museum piece coasting on past kudos, but a vital experience with a revitalizing effect. Standing ovations are commonplace here these days, but the one at Wednesday’s final preview possessed a singular fervor that had Rylance jumping up and down with childlike glee at the curtain call.In the show, Johnny, who goes by the nickname Rooster, walks with a halting gait that goes unexplained. Physical impediments, it seems, barely matter to this tattooed, barrel-chested reprobate, who performs a headstand within minutes of his arrival onstage. He then downs a mixture of vodka, milk and a raw egg, whose shell Rylance tosses into the audience. (On Wednesday, someone tossed the shell back, prompting a delicious double take from the star.)Johnny’s outsize gestures are those of a man whose defiantly reckless existence is under serious threat. While the rural community in which he lives is holding its annual spring fete to mark St. George’s Day, Johnny tenaciously stays at the beat-up trailer he has long called home. A magnet for a cross-section of local hangers-on, including a loquacious professor (a beautiful turn from Alan David) and underage female adolescents hungry for spliffs and sex, Johnny’s illegal encampment is soon to be bulldozed. His young son arrives for a visit, only to be whisked away by the child’s disapproving mother (a persuasive Indra Ové).From left, Charlotte O’Leary, Mark Rylance, Mackenzie Crook, Kemi Awoderu and Ed Kear in “Jerusalem.”Simon AnnandNot only is Johnny faced with a final order from government officials to move on, but he must confront the wrath of Troy Whitworth (a fearsome Barry Sloane), whose 15-year-old stepdaughter, Phaedra, has sought refuge with Johnny. Troy will go to violent lengths to claim her back.It’s Phaedra (Eleanor Worthington-Cox) who opens the play, singing the English hymn that gives “Jerusalem” its title and whose lyricist, William Blake, is referenced during a game of Trivial Pursuit later on. Worthington-Cox delivers this most stirring of tunes in front of a drop curtain depicting the cross of St. George, England’s flag. But the play itself transcends nationality to speak to any disaffected outsider who won’t be easily silenced and who gathers acolytes like moths to an inextinguishable flame.I’ve now seen “Jerusalem” five times (including on Broadway), and Rickson’s current company — several of them holdovers, with Rylance — are as good as any predecessors, and sometimes better: Worthington-Cox is the most moving Phaedra I have experienced.Mackenzie Crook remains especially heartbreaking as Ginger, Johnny’s friend and ally whose haunted eyes convey a premonition that his buddy’s days are numbered. Jack Riddiford, a company newcomer, brings a boyish appeal to the role of Lee, who dreams of starting afresh in Australia but is thankful for the raucous good times that Johnny has made possible on home soil.You can imagine one or two of these characters as avid supporters of Brexit, though the idea didn’t exist when Butterworth wrote the play: The sweary abattoir-worker Davey (Ed Kear, another cast newcomer) doesn’t “see the point,” he says, of other countries, including neighboring Wales. British newspapers have been busily assessing “Jerusalem” as a defining state-of-the-nation commentary whose legacy and influence are incalculable. Butterworth has stayed out of the discussion, saying only that he revived the play so his young daughter, Bel, could see it.But such considerations are academic next to the visceral immediacy of a play that soars as high as the designer Ultz’s ravishing tree-filled set, which seems to sweep up beyond the theater’s roof. That vast reach is of a piece with a performance you might describe as once-in-a-lifetime, if it weren’t so evident that Rylance’s passion for this part, thank goodness, seems far from over yet.JerusalemThrough Aug. 7 at the Apollo Theater, London; jerusalemtheplay.co.uk. More