Characters

Characters of Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth

Lee

Davey

Ginger

Dawn

He's a young teenager, who enters the play having been hidden in the sofa asleep after about 15 minutes; he plans to emigrate to Australia the next day making his character seem rather naive, despite having little money to take with him.

Davey, a young teenage abattoir worker who is best friends with Lee, and visits Rooster regularly for free drugs and alcohol. He can't stand the idea of leaving Wiltshire due to him seeing it as the hear of England.

Dawn is Johnny's ex-girlfriend and mother to his only known child Marky, although she disapproves of his lifestyle it is blatant she still has soft spot for Johnny and having spent some time with him she relapses and kisses him, but there is no reconciliation over their dysfunctional relationship.

Pathetic underdog of the group, being older than the others who hang around with Johnny, never having grown out of the lifestyle. He aspires to be a DJ, but is in fact an unemployed plasterer.

Pea and Tanya – Two local girls who emerge from underneath Johnny's caravan, having fallen asleep drunk there, Johnny sees these two as a nuisance; a drain on his drugs and alcohol whereas they see him in a very different light - a party host and dealer. He gets slated by Troy for being involved with 'underage girls' but in classic Rooster Byron manner he shrugs it off.

Johnny 'Rooster' Byron

The Professor

The Way out

Vague and whimsical, the elderly professor spouts philosophical nothings and unwittingly takes LSD. The Professor appears and disappears throughout the play without much importance but is a good representation of the mix of people that Johnny Byron attracts.

Johnny is an eccentric ex-daredevil drug dealer who in his spare time is a storyteller of "baloney" with which he expresses his many minions including underage girls from the area, as well as holding many legal gatherings which tend to get wildly out of control, from his clearing and caravan.

Marky

Phaedra

Phaedra is Troy's stepdaughter, she is seen at the beginning of both Act One and Two singing the hymn Jerusalem dressed in fairy wings, and her disappearance is referred to; it is only at the end of Act Two that it is revealed that she is actually hiding in Johnny's caravan. The disappearance of Phaedra is why Troy comes to Byron's clearing and kicks off.

Linda Fawcett and Luke Parsons – the council officials that harass Byron constantly about him breaking the law about where he lives. With these two officials Johnny becomes a town, he speaks in third person as if 'Byron' was a religion or law, something to follow, which in a small sense, is true due to the many people that go to his caravan treat him like a lord.

Marky – Johnny's six-year-old son, who carries the infamous Byron blood and gets bullied at school for being Johnny's son as the town tries to outcast his father and therefore Marky as well.