It was said of Lenny Bruce that he hated punchlines. You can tell if you listen to his infectious routines, or bits as he called them, that he loved showing off to his audience, flattering them, tickling them with a new idea. But when he got to the end of a bit he rarely went for, or got, a big laugh.

I have just seen ‘Jerusalem‘ with Simon at the Apollo in Shaftesbury Avenue and Mark Rylance gives a performance just like that. You just want him to keep talking, telling tall tales. When the other characters talk you are willing them to stop so that you can hear more of what he has to say.

Jez Butterworth’s lines serve him brilliantly, they appear to come out of him spontaneously and are full of just enough beguiling pagan codswallop to lure you into a prechristian druidical reverie.

An earlier poster called Rylance’s character, Johnny Rooster Byron,” a Jimmy Porter for our times”. Rooster is an inverted Jimmy Porter, not angry, but in many ways soothing and supportive to his comrades, not a young man railing against people standing in his way but an old man surveying the wreckage in his wake.

The ending, when it comes, seems like the ending of a thousand plays I have seen, a big loud crescendo with a mysterious change of lighting, suggesting a semi supernatural intervention. What Lenny Bruce would call a cop out.

If you can ignore the sad fact that in theatre, as in life, all good things come to an end then you can ignore the stagey conclusion and revel in the company of the little red Rooster.