Jez Butterworth’s first play for seven years sees us at the ‘Seaview’ in Blackpool during the hot summer of 1976. The Hills of California, named after a song by Johnny Mercer, is about the Webb sisters, a singing quartet back in the 1950s.
Veronica Webb is dying of cancer upstairs at the Seaview, where all the rooms are named for American states, and not one can see the sea. This is back street Blackpool, away from the glamour of the nightspots.
As youngest daughter Jill (Helena Wilson) waits for her sisters to arrive, it is clear her life has never changed. Sisters Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond) and Gloria (Leanne Best) arrive with husbands (and Gloria’s children), bringing a change of attitude and a hint of what could have been.
But Joan, the eldest, is in California. Will she come over after years of no contact – and what caused her to leave the family and the country in the first place?
In a heavily detailed set by Rob Howell and lit by Natasha Chivers, dominated by wooden staircases and using a revolve to present two rooms where the storyline unfolds, The Hills of California flips between the Webbs’s reunion and their childhood.
Ambitious mum Veronica drills her girls like little soldiers, mimicking the Andrews Sisters in their harmonies (arranged by Nick Powell). They are an echo of wartime frustrations and nostalgia, dressed in matching outfits and smiles.
Gloria is the outlier, Joan, the talent. The revelation of what caused the family to fracture is all too believable (but a bit clumsy), but all the sisters are well drawn with distinct personalities. We believe they are one family while firmly following their own paths.
Families are fickle, Butterworth is saying, but women are strong. The men in The Hills of California are mostly dominated by their wives, fools, or wolves.
Bryan Dick and Shaun Dooley play two parts each, but they are colour filling in around their main cast – I did enjoy Dick’s lousy comic who stood for all his peers with his bad jokes; and Dooley’s rambling Bill, husband to Gloria, had his moments.
Elsewhere, Richard Lumsden is touching as the girls’s pianist and assumed protector of the family, and Natasha Magigi is briskly sympathetic as nurse Penny.
The Webbs in the 1950s are cleverly cast to suggest their adult counterparts, giving us a sense of their closeness as children. Lara McDonnell, Nancy Allsop, Sophia Riley, and Nicola Turner are all excellent.
Laura Donnelly plays both mother Veronica and grown-up daughter Joan – very different people and yet so alike in their destructive ambition.
Structured in performance as three acts, with one interval after an hour and a short pause of 3 minutes an hour later, The Hills of California is currently running at three hours. It doesn’t feel padded out to that point, the time racing by.
Butterworth and Sam Mendes give the plot room to grow with stories that seed each other and a careful understanding of how northern women communicate in the deepest crises.
It’s a world I recognise as I grew up in it, and every year, we trekked to Blackpool for sun, sea, and sand. The Seaview may look a little opulent for a place that has seen better days, but the sense of hidden spaces and secrets works well.
The Hills of California isn’t a perfect piece, but it will draw you in and leave you wondering. Concentration is a must for this slow-burner.
It continues at the Harold Pinter Theatre until mid-June with tickets here.
****
Image credit: Mark Douet