Class, Culture and Tragedy in the Plays of Jez Butterworth, 1st ed. 2021

Jez Butterworth is undoubtedly one of the most popular and commercially successful playwrights to have emerged in Britain in the early twenty-first century. This book, only the second so far to have been written on him, argues that the power of his most acclaimed work comes from a reinvigoration of traditional forms of tragedy expressed in a theatricalized working-class language. Butterworth?s most developed tragedies invoke myth and legend as a figurative resistance to the flat and crushing instrumentalism of contemporary British political and economic culture. In doing so they summon older, resonant narratives which are both popular and high-cultural in order to address present cultural crises in a language and in a form which possess wide appeal. Tracing the development of Butterworth?s work chronologically from Mojo (1995) to The Ferryman (2017), each chapter offers detailed critical readings of a single play, exploring how myth and legend become significantin a variety of ways to Butterworth?s presentation of cultural and personal crisis.

First book length study to focus on Butterworth's most recent play, The Ferryman Provides a critical guide to all of Butterworth’s stage plays and traces the evolution of both his dramatic technique and his cultural critique Examines Butterworth's treatment of masculinity and the presentation of his female characters