The Hills of California
Opening Night: September 29, 2024
Theater: Broadhurst Theatre
Website: thehillsofcalifornia.com
Following their triumphant production of The Ferryman, Tony-winning Playwright Jez Butterworth and Oscar® and Tony-winning Director Sam Mendes reunite for The Hills of California. In the sweltering heat of a 1970s summer, the Webb sisters return to their childhood home in Blackpool, an English seaside town, where their mother Veronica lies dying upstairs. Gloria and Ruby now have families of their own. Jill never left. And Joan? No one’s heard from her in twenty years… but Jill insists that their mother’s favorite won’t let them down this time. The run-down Sea View Guest House is haunted by bittersweet memories of amusement park rides and overdue bills. Back in the 1950s, each night the four young sisters rehearse their singing act, managed by their fiercely loving single mom. But when a record producer offers a shot at fame and a chance to escape, it will cost them all dearly. With stunning design and glorious music, The Hills of California is “a rich, funny, brilliantly layered drama.” (Financial Times)
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September 29, 2024
“The Hills of California” is a yarn, not a lesson; a tale, not a tract. It resists interpretation, possibly as a way of resisting criticism, which, despite its flaws, it clearly does with great success.
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September 30, 2024
In the British playwright’s expert hands, the nearly three-hour tragicomedy never feels indulgent; the rich texture of the world Butterworth builds is our payoff.
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September 29, 2024
It’s in that long, almost serialized air that Hills best breathes: when, as in a soap, your attention is enthralled by the bigger picture.
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September 29, 2024
The Hills of California is often very funny, but it has a core of deep regret that gets revealed as layers of family secrets are peeled away.
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September 29, 2024
The sheer exuberant maximalism of The Ferryman went a long way toward obscuring, even at times absolving, the show’s overdependence on some pretty trite types and twists. In The Hills of California, Butterworth’s calculations are exposed. He’s cooking with the same stock, but the soup has gotten unappetizingly thin.
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September 29, 2024
The Broadway mounting also benefits from the virtue of time. You can tell that 10 of the actors (including the four adult sisters and their younger counterparts) have been doing the play for six months already, and their performances are now detailed and lived-in. They’re aided by Howell’s costumes (which perfectly establish period and social status), chilling lighting from Natasha Chivers, and positively ghostly sound design by Nick Powell.
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September 29, 2024
Ultimately, it is the cast that makes the Seaview memorable. The play is a true ensemble showcase, with the adult sisters and their younger counterparts hitting all the stops… Butterworth’s portrayal of grief and the memories people choose to remember — and forget — is moving, and worth checking into the Seaview (the Broadhurst Theatre) to experience.
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September 29, 2024
“A superbly performed reckoning with old traumas and those family squabbles that can seem so petty on the surface.”
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September 29, 2024
That’s not to say that family dynamics like these aren’t worth further examination, or that Butterworth’s take on them isn’t artfully done. But almost nothing about it feels original.
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September 29, 2024
It’s not the playwright’s best (that’s “Jerusalem,” which Mark Rylance was explosive in on Broadway) or his grandest (that’d be “The Ferryman”). But “Hills” has an appealing haunted atmosphere, even if the ghosts aren’t specters, but traumas. And in its dreamy third act, the play distinguishes itself from the many, many dramas about kids caught in the web of their parent’s pipe dream.
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September 29, 2024
Jez Butterworth’s ambitious, captivating and richly rewarding domestic drama “The Hills of California” straddles dual worlds of dreams and reality as it shuttles between two pivotal time periods in the lives of the Webb women.
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September 29, 2024
The Hills of California is a sludgy drag in which not enough happens, and not enough familial depth and grit examined, to merit such a long performance. If one had a brutal red pen in hand, the first act could be scythed completely; the play would rattle along better at just under two hours.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 29, 2024
The Hills of California does not necessarily venture to any places that dysfunctional family drama has not tread before, but the switching-back-and-forth-between-decades structure — coupled with a commanding and versatile centerpiece performance by Donnelly — still make these hills worth climbing.
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September 29, 2024
Sam Mendes’ direction delivers that stunning moment by making perfect use of Rob Howell’s cold, spooky and monumental set. In addition to giving us Donnelly’s great performance, Mendes makes us believe the four adolescent actors are real sisters.
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