Biggest Scenery Chewer
He shimmies, he shakes, he bellows, he hobbles around on a gimpy leg, he mixes a drink in his pants, he stands on his head in a cistern of water — the Tony-nominated Mark Rylance in Jerusalem may not be doing the best acting on Broadway, but he's certainly doing the most acting. Naturally, he's won raves for it, just as he did for similarly over-the-top turns in Boeing Boeing and La Bete. Jez Buttworth's three-hour-plus play — about a dissolute former motorcycle daredevil who lives in a trailer in the woods of southwest England, defies the local authorities trying to kick him out and gathers around him a druggy band of modern-day hippies — does have its moments. But the play, like the performance, is exhausting, and not in a good way: it's a familiar, long-winded ode to the dissolute outsider as romantic antihero.