The Hills of California Broadway Reviews

This is not the kind of play that brandishes a singular sharp point; it is the kind that swaddles you in innumerable impressions. Like Butterworth’s previous Broadway outings — the mythopoetic “Jerusalem” in 2011, the brawny Hugh Jackman vehicle “The River” in 2014 and especially the Irish fable “The Ferryman” in 2018 — “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.

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. Though this densely-packed, 17-actor play is more family-focused in its themes than Butterworth’s previous, stunning epics “Jerusalem” and “The Ferryman,” “The Hills of California” — also directed by Sam Mendes, who staged the Tony-winning “Ferryman” — strikes societal notes, too, as it details women with limited choices and plenty of obstacles in an ever-changing world.

Maybe that’s why Mendes’s production broods and thrums like it might suddenly turn into a Big Important Drama, or a potentially frightening one. The magnificent rotating set (by designer Rob Howell) features M.C. Escher-inspired stairways ascending as though into the great beyond. Deep, lingering shadows (lighting is by Natasha Chivers) and ominous swells of scoring (by composer and sound designer Nick Powell) drum up more intrigue than most of the story’s well-worn tropes. Even for a scene of imminent demise on the British coast, the dreariness is a bit overdone.

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.

I initially came away from “The Hills of California” feeling that it is a neatly constructed but derivative family drama that lacked the excitement of Butterworth’s 2018 melodrama “The Ferryman” (another London import directed by Mendes and starring Donnelly) and was subject to meandering scenes full of accusations. But over the next few days, I became increasingly fascinated by the play’s plot mechanisms (which leave a lot of lingering mystery), the psychological damage sustained by each character, and impressed by the shaded performances and meticulous stagecraft.

Laura Donnelly plays both the thirtysomething Joan and, in the flashbacks, mother Veronica. It’s an astonishing dual performance. As the would-be, maybe nearly-was rock star Joan, Donnelly pitches her voice to a cigarette-stained California hippie burnout with only a hint of the Blackpool roots she so clearly has worked mightily to eradicate. As Veronica, Donnelly is a stage mother wannabe with arguably good intentions, a smart, talented woman smothered by the times and desperate to give her daughters the opportunities she never had. Equal parts Mama Rose, Miss Jean Brodie, Amanda Wingfield and Sophie Zawistowska, Veronica is a monster for an instantly regretted minute, and she and those she loves will pay for that lapse the rest of their lives.

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.

While the play is an ensemble effort, it is also an extraordinary showcase for Donnelly. The present here is haunted by the past, and the two collide powerfully in the wreckage and reckoning of the play’s third act. (Butterworth has rewritten it for the better from the version that played in London.) Donnelly returns in this final stretch, strikingly and effectively, to play a wholly different character. But the moment in her performance that will stay with me the longest comes a little earlier, at the end of the second act, when Veronica stares out at the audience, failed by her aplomb, listening in terror for a silence she dreads. In her eyes we see the cost of her ambition: As ancient in its way as any, this is a story of human sacrifice.

Butterworth writes sprawling, talky epics with ensembles in the double digits, three-hour run times, and lots of room for showy speeches. He’s fascinated by the death of dreams and the past that haunts us, the slow decay of England. Hills is not essentially different, thought it does focus on women. Men in this world—save one—are feckless husband-enablers and punching bags for Veronica and her mostly unhappy grown daughters. The one man who makes a definitive impact on the Webb household is the Yank talent scout, Luther, played by New York stage veteran David Wilson Barnes. Seeming at first a dryly reserved finder of genius (he claims to have discovered Nat King Cole), Luther reveals darker motives by requesting a private audition with 15-year-old Joan (Lara McDonnell) in “Mississippi” (Seaview’s rooms are named after American states). What makes the offstage encounter between Luther and Joan more disturbing is the suggestion that the girl initiates it—a tragic escape from her suffocating surroundings.

Whereas The Ferryman had death in its name yet packed the stage with warm-blooded life—animals and children, drink and dance and harvest festivities—The Hills of California, acts as its reverse image. The title, taken from the Johnny Mercer tune, is all glowing, crooning mid-century dreaminess, a life of sunny days and glamorous blue Pacific nights. But those hills are as distant and untouchable as the horizon, and the play they loom over is heavy with death. The result is that Butterworth—who puts plays together like machines, calibrated for passion or pathos at the pull of a certain lever—has less to hide behind. 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.

The play has been reportedly significantly rewritten since its London West End run, but it is still just over three hours, and unlike the Tony and Olivier Award-winning Butterworth’s memorable, deservedly award-winning plays (Jerusalem, The Ferryman), 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.

The ensemble acting in director Sam Mendes’ blistering production from London’s West End is off the charts when it comes to veracity, intensity and the manifestation of how childhood trauma invariably impacts adulthood. And the characters Butterworth forges are so empathetic that I never wanted this three-act show to end. Or even to pause. Not with everyone in such pain. As I write the morning after, I feel like I am still recovering from the level of emotion this thing churned around in me.

The four actresses cast as the young sisters — Nancy Allsop, Sophia Ally, Lara McDonnell, and Nicola Turner — are likewise excellent, though I doubt their character arcs will leave any aspiring performers with stars in their eyes. Both in spite of that and in part because of it, “The Hills of California” is essential viewing for anyone who loves theater.

Having now seen “The Hills of California” on Broadway, where it opened Sunday at the Broadhurst Theatre, I realize Butterworth has written something much more significant and moving. In crossing the Atlantic Ocean, he also cut a plot detail from the third act — and it’s a prime example of less being not only more but much better.

Of the large cast, it’s necessary to stress the quality performances of all concerned. First by length and commitment to her goal is Donnelly, who tackles the potent role with both hands clenched. (She also serves eerily in another crucial bit.) Those playing the 1976 and 1955 Webbs are unfailingly strong, Lovibond possessing maybe the best pipes. Other standouts among the full ensemble standouts are Ta-Rea Campbell as seen-it-all nurse Penny, Barnes as shrewd manager St. John, Richard Lumsden as in-house piano accompanist Joe Fogg, and Bryan Dick as both Dennis and wise-cracking Jack Larkin.

But this is no standard-issue dysfunctional family drama; it’s also a meticulously crafted, emotion-packed memory play. With one rotation of Rob Howell’s spectacular towering set—anchored by a labyrinthian Escher-like staircase that seems to stretch to the sky—we’re back in 1955, in the Seaview Luxury Guesthouse and Spa, which is not luxurious and almost certainly doesn’t have a spa. Hills toggles between decades with ease—a credit to director Sam Mendes, whose particular gift is taking sprawling stories (see: Butterworth’s The Ferryman; The Lehman Trilogy) and making them feel intimate.

The best way to enjoy The Hills of California – not that it takes any real effort to do so – is to take it as a long yarn that unfolds across its own soapy, extended timeline. Jez Butterworth’s latest play, directed by Sam Mendes and imported from a London run earlier this year, is never less than compelling, well-executed and performed. But the slightness of its core that’s far from insurmountable, but can incur a modest wince once revealed, about two-thirds of the way into its two-hour-forty-five runtime.

The problem is not that the story is familiar, although in many ways it is; the overbearing stage mother overseeing dated routines (Madame Rose in “Gypsy,” anyone?) It’s that Butterworth’s three previous productions were so memorable. “The Hills of California” doesn’t have a “once-in-a-lifetime” performance like Mark Rylance’s in “Jerusalem” (2011.) “The Ferryman,” which won the Tony for Best Play in 2019, offered not just an epic connection to the real-life Troubles in Belfast; it featured a live baby, bunny, and goose.

The three-act play is 2 hours and 45 minutes long, and the plot lingers too long on tenterhooks for Joan, the estranged sister who has been away from Seaview for over two decades, to return and say her goodbyes. While the unraveling of the mystery surrounding Joan is a real gut punch, Butterworth spends more time anticipating a death than uncovering a family secret.

While this dysfunctional family drama slides by surprisingly smoothly over its 2 ¾ hours running time, thanks to his colorful writing, the superb work of an ensemble cast, and the seamless direction of the great Sam Mendes, it’s only on your train or taxi ride home that it will hit you just how overlong, overpopulated and undernourished the work really is. It’s ultimately little more than a worthy imitation of something Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee might have written in their prime, and not a play as sui generis as Butterworth’s “The Ferryman” or “Jerusalem.”