Neil Bowen on
A summary of David Rabey's chapter on Jerusalem in The Films and Theatre of Jez Butterworth.
An English Ghost Dance
Lee’s desire to leave, along with the professor’s references to myths and spirits, for example, “all the lost gods of England”, highlights the restrictive limitations of modern English culture.
Johnny is like a shaman, specifically like Wovoka, and his various defiant actions against authority are analogous to Native Americans defying the American government.
However, this could be disrespectful to Shamans, as Johnny has many unattractive qualities.
Modern society is vacuous and the Shaman’s task is to put us back in touch with deeper reality and meaningfulness.
Whatever doubts about Johnny being a Shaman, the play dramatises a resistance to ‘top-down government’s reductive reificaton of the terms of life, which sells everybody short; and the play’s contrary faith in intuitions, which might suggest (if not solutions, then) intimations - or revelations - of wi(l)der possibilities’.