Considering his brilliant comic turn earlier this season in the revival of La Bete and now his titanic performance in Jez Butterworth’s new play Jerusalem at the same theater, we might as well engrave actor Mark Rylance’s Tony Award right now. We also might as well hand over the Music Box Theatre to this dazzling thespian so he can pretty much do whatever he wants with it.

Imported to Broadway after successful runs at London’s Royal Court and on the West End, Jerusalem is a rambling, phantasmagorical play in which everything and nothing happens. Simultaneously a portrait of its hypnotic lead character, the drunken wastrel Johnny “Rooster” Bryon, and a depiction of an England torn between its mystical past and repressive modern society, it is a work that is endlessly intriguing even if it occasionally tries one’s patience.

 Living in a dilapidated trailer home in a remote wooded area, Rooster is a former daredevil stunt rider who has retreated to a life of drink, drugs and hosting wild bacchanalias for friends and strangers, ranging from his best friend Ginger (Mackenzie Crook) to a pair of thrill-seeking teenage girls (Molly Ranson, Charlotte Mills) to an elderly philosopher dubbed “The Professor” (Alan David).

After a typical night of debauchery depicted in a frenzied opening scene set to ear-splitting techno music, Rooster wakes up and performs his morning ablutions, which include dousing his head in a bucket of water before indulging in vodka and speed. Along comes Ginger, mightily pissed off after having missed the previous night’s festivities.

Over the course of three acts lasting more than three hours, several plot elements emerge, including the impending departure to Australia of local boy Lee (John Gallagher, Jr.); Rooster’s tense reunion with his estranged wife (Geraldine Hughes) and six-year-old son; the disappearance of a teenage girl (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) with whom Rooster has a mysterious relationship; and the efforts of the local authorities to banish Rooster and his cronies from their bucolic surroundings.

But the vague, sprawling narrative is far less important than the depiction of the almost literal force of nature that is Rooster, who regales his followers with such tall tales as an encounter with a giant who claims to have built Stonehenge and who seems to have a mystical ability to control people with his eyes.

The densely flowing dialogue, alternately lyrical and rudely profane, can prove wearisome at times. But director Ian Rickson has provided such an endlessly rich, fully-lived in production that one can overlook the play’s longueurs. The wonderfully detailed set, featuring towering trees and an assortment of live animals including roosters, a turtle and a golfish, provides the sort of surreal atmosphere in which seemingly anything can happen.

The large supporting cast is perfection, although special praise must be accorded Crook, hilarious as the hapless Ginger; Gallagher, Jr., appealing as the personable Lee; and Hughes, deeply sympathetic as the beleaguered wife.

But it is Rylance’s titanic presence that galvanizes the evening. The actor, virtually unrecognizable from his previous Broadway stints in Boeing-Boeing (for which he won a Tony) and La Bete (for which he will surely be nominated), is endlessly compelling, even when his character is simply quietly taking in the madness surrounding him. Using a deeper voice and seemingly thickened body to create a physically arresting figure, he delivers the sort of landmark performance that will inevitably be compared to such similar acting chameleons as Laurence Olivier and Daniel-Day Lewis.

Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45thSt. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com.