Johnny Byron In Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem

In Jez Butterworth’s ‘Jerusalem’, Johnny Byron is depicted as a man in his 40’s/50’s who is the definition of blithe. Johnny is someone who lives in a caravan in the middle of a woodland; he doesn’t pay tax. Johnny makes his money by selling drugs to his friends and young teenage girls. In a sense he is a very patriotic man which the audience are made aware of due too his enthusiasm for St. George’s Day. Johnny’s ‘don’t care’ attitude over-rides all of his other characteristics which leaves the audience at times wanting to slap him into reality, but on the contrary he is a character which everyone can love for his self-confidence and pride.

I see Johnny Byron as a clear drug-dealer and drug-user antihero throughout the play, however to some

After Wesley delivers his line, I feel like if I was playing Johnny, at this moment, I would most likely drop the broom and turn 90 degrees, on the heels of my shoe, (to which ever direction Wesley is sitting) whilst clicking my fingers into a horizontal ‘L’ shape so that my index fingers would be pointing at Wesley. Whilst carrying out these movements, I would be delivering the first part of the line, ‘Is correct.’ When saying this line I would want to elongate the adjective ‘correct’ and snap my fingers in time with ending the word with the ’T’ sound. By elongating the word ‘correct’ the effect of a 70s quiz show is created. This creates more humour for the audience as Wesley’s seriousness is being juxtaposed by Johnny’s constant sarcasm. By saying ‘You named that tune in four’ denotes that Wesley named the song within four seconds. When delivering this line, I think it would comical if I counted the seconds on my fingers. I would have confusion strike on my face to display Johnny’s lack of basic mathematical knowledge. When eventually holding up my fingers to display the number of seconds, it would be entertaining for the audience if after pondering on how many fingers would represent the number four I held up the wrong number of fingers: perhaps three. All the same, this would only be amusing if I made sure I looked super confident with the number of fingers that I was