The Hills of California

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In a theatrical era when “full-length” works often fail to exceed 90 minutes, the English playwright Jez Butterworth dares to dubiously dramatize for approximately twice that span. His previous Broadway epic, The Ferryman, conflated The Troubles with anachronistic paganism, a disturbed old woman’s fear of banshees, and lots of boozing, earning Butterworth much critical acclaim, as well as Olivier and Tony Awards, for this bold mix of pretentiousness and unabashed Irish stereotyping. The Hills of California, Butterworth’s latest overhyped synthetic slog teeming with underdeveloped characters, is basically a tale of two postwar entertainment cities: Los Angeles, the world’s dream capital, and Blackpool, England, a fading resort town that’s become uniquely fit for delusions.

Cue Veronica Webb (Laura Donnelly), a single mum from Blackpool, where, in 1955, she is also the affected proprietress of the Seaview Luxury Guesthouse (the adjectives aren’t true), mostly serving visitors who need a romantic hideaway for an hour or less. Besotted with America in the crumbling British Empire, she is fanatically striving to launch her four daughters into stardom as an adolescent version of The Andrews Sisters. Cut to 1976, when she’s still stuck on the sad side of the rainbow, dying in Blackpool of stomach cancer, likely caused by the connected risk factors of alcoholism and extremely warranted guilt. Unseen by the audience on her deathbed, Veronica is expiring in an upstairs room of the family’s now decaying business, anticipatorily grieved in the tacky public parlour below by the damaged women her ambitions have wrought. With the assistance of Rob Howell’s turntable set, director Sam Mendes glides back-and-forth between the past and the more distant past, so we can figure out how ersatz Mama Rose got it all so terribly wrong, aside from the obvious misstep of seeking to emulate the popularity of a singing group a decade beyond its heyday.

During the play’s somnambulant beginning, the unhappily married middle Webb sisters Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond) and Gloria (Leanne Best) return to a heatwave-inflicted Blackpool to say goodbye to mum, towing along their respectively spineless husbands Dennis (Bryan Dick) and Bill (Richard Short), either of whom could be on loan from Hedda Gabler. A tangle of anxieties, Ruby reminisces about her first, incomparable lover, while Gloria behaves as if her sisterly bond is actually with the Furies. Contributing to the gigantic chip on Gloria’s shoulder, she is burdened with two forgettable offspring, Patty (Nancy Allsop) and Tony (Liam Bixby), who, if nothing else, aid Butterworth’s continued efforts to get actors stage credits through unnecessary roles. Meanwhile, we learn that 32-year-old Jill (Helena Wilson), the youngest sister, has been stuck taking care of mum in lieu of leaving home or losing her own virginity. She also can’t remember the name of Veronica’s new nurse (Ta’Rea Campbell), which is something else to know about Jill.

Other than these details, Butterworth isn’t particularly interested in Ruby, Gloria, or Jill, who largely just wait around–like the audience–for the program-assured entrance of Veronica’s eldest daughter Joan (Donnelly, again, with Veronica concealed behind death’s door), long separated from her family after becoming its only member to reach the promised land of Los Angeles. Before the reunion happens, however, we’re awakened by time-shifting renditions of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” big hits for The Andrews Sisters that were already dust-covered in 1955, when the Young Gloria (Allsop, in a useful role), Young Ruby (Sophia Ally), Young Jill (Nicola Turner), and Young Joan (Lara McDonnell) spiritedly performed them in Veronica’s kitchen-cum-hippodrome.

We also hear the play’s titular Johnny Mercer tune, with its juxtaposition of sunny and foreboding lyrics: “The hills of California will give ya a start/I guess I better warn ya cuz you’ll lose you heart.” Decked out in oddly extravagant costumes for a war widow’s children (though Butterworth alternatively hints at spousal abandonment, too), the girls make for a toe-tappingly agreeable act (their quaint choreography is by Ellen Kane). But, as an American agent (David Wilson Barnes) bluntly informs Veronica, four-part harmonizing is not hip enough anymore for the London Palladium, let alone the increasingly rock-and-roll obsessed United States.

While the agent’s initial presence comes at a dehumanizing cost for Veronica, she doesn’t incur the one that keeps him around after he disparages her daughters’ routine. Fully aware of the agent’s excruciating price for “representing” talent, Veronica, alone in the spotlight, listens to it being paid. A lurid, nonmusical answer to “Rose’s Turn,” it’s an ugly psychological reimagining that completely alienates the audience from Veronica rather than generating the slightest reason to empathize with her. At this moment, I sincerely ached for my earlier boredom.

Substituting actor doubling for insight, Donnelly reappears after a pause that splits the second and third acts like a sledgehammer, having traded in her Betty-Crocker look for a Laurel-Canyon outfit (Howell also designed the costumes) to portray the adult Joan. With the competent abetting of lighting designer Natasha Chivers and Howell’s still rotating set, Mendes repeatedly finds trite ways to visually belabor the point that Young Joan essentially died in Blackpool two decades ago, only to be born again in Los Angeles as the insouciant adult Joan. To offer praise where it’s due, Butterworth more compellingly elucidates the meaning of adult Joan’s earth motherly transfiguration in a monologue that Donnelly delivers admirably, as evidenced by the rapt attention of Lovibond, Best, and Wilson. They might as well have left the stage and joined us in the orchestra.

The Hills of California (through December 22, 2024)

Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.thehillsofcalifornia.com

Running time: two hours and 45 minutes including one intermission and a pause