*This house. It’s called ‘Sea View’. It’s just I’ve looked out of every window, and you can’t. You can’t see the sea.*
Blackpool, 1976. The driest summer in 200 years. The beaches are packed. The hotels are heaving. In the sweltering backstreets, far from the choc ices and donkey rides, the Webb Sisters are returning to their mother's run-down guest house, as she lies dying upstairs.
Following their multi award-winning triumph *The Ferryman*, Jez Butterworth, writer of *Jerusalem*, resumes his partnership with Sam Mendes, director of *The Lehman Trilogy*, to bring you The Hills of California.
__*The Hills of California* plays at Harold Pinter Theatre from 27 January 2024 for a strictly limited season.__
What a frustrating evening. Jez Butterworth’s eagerly awaited new drama comes tantalisingly close to sweeping us off our feet: Laura Donnelly’s hypnotic central performance as Veronica, matriarch of a Blackpool guesthouse, will certainly linger in the memory. Yet in the end, the director Sam Mendes hasn’t been able to impose enough discipline on Butterworth’s penchant for baggy, poetic speeches.
Though it’s a commendably female-dominated evening (Ruby and Gloria’s husbands are derisory, ancillary figures), a shaming light is shone on predatory and presumptuous male behaviour in both eras. There may be some debate about the MeToo aspect of the storyline, which broaches female complicity in abuse; it’s a bold move for a man to tackle this subject. Of more pressing, prosaic concern for me was that the evening, running to almost three hours, just needs a trim and a less languid pace.
Videos