Britain Born, New York Bred

The New York theater landscape is filled with UK transfers, but rarely do British plays start out on this side of the ocean. "Parlour Song," then, English writer Jez Butterworth's fourth play, which makes its world premiere tonight at the Atlantic Theater Company, is breaking the mold.

The relationship between Mr. Butterworth and the Atlantic, though, extends all the way back to his debut play. "Mojo," a gangster drama set in 1950s London's Soho district, was a dazzling success at an off-Broadway nonprofit theater in 1997. Until now, though, Mr. Butterworth's work has always transferred to the Atlantic after originally opening at West London playhouse The Royal Court.

Set in an unnamed suburb just outside London, it's a bleak yet comic drama chronicling a love triangle involving an unhappily married couple and a male neighbor. The setting, pursuits, and verbiage are all rooted in middle class English suburbia; the many British references range from traditional dessert jam roly poly to TV channel Sky Sports. And two of Parlour Song's three actors — Emily Mortimer and Jonathan Cake — are English.

For 39-year-old Mr Butterworth, premiering the play in front of an American audience has been an "exotic" experience. "In London, you get four previews and then your show opens," he said. "You perhaps find out what you what you wanted to do in scene five as the run's coming to an end."

The departure of the Royal Court's artistic director Ian Rickson, who directed all of Mr. Butterworth's plays at the theater, fueled the playwright's desire to forego London in favor of New York. "I'd love to feel that the brilliant time I've had at the Royal Court, and the fact that previously I've had a 100% record in having stuff there, doesn't mean I have to go on doing that until I drop down dead," Mr. Butterworth said.

"Parlour Song," Mr Butterworth said, was inspired by his childhood in Chiswell Green in Hertfordshire, South-East England. "I grew up in this environment where all the houses were the same, a hinterland of new built houses, and you could see over the years relationships around you gradually imploding. One day a wife would come round and she'd be in tears and you'd have had no idea that something biblically awful had been going on in her cookie-cutter home." Mr. Butterworth based the play on the structure of a murder ballad, citing blues musicians Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Robert Johnson as influences. "I wanted to take characters who, were it not for a sudden welling up of passion, would probably be the last people you'd write a play about," he said.

Ms. Mortimer, who plays Joy, the frustrated wife, felt a kinship to the cultural allusions that populate Mr. Butterworth's play. "It's somehow nostalgic getting to say words like Tesco's and Polos," she said, referring to the supermarket chain and brand of mints, respectively. "It's very reminiscent of a particular kind of England." This is Ms. Mortimer's first stage role in a decade and her American theater debut.

Unlike Ms. Mortimer, who lives in New York, Mr. Butterworth has resisted the temptation to move full-time to America, preferring instead to live on a farm in Somerset in South-West England. For now, though, he is enjoying his stint in New York. "We've been practically full most nights," he said of the preview run. "I've also been pleasantly surprised that the cultural references seem to be translating," he noted, "because it is such a specifically English thing."