Review: Four Sisters and the Secret That Destroyed a Family in The Hills of California

A decades-spanning British family drama with a cast of nearly two dozen. It’s time for the annual autumn Broadway extravaganza from power producer Sonia Friedman. This year, it’s Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California, playing at the Broadhurst following a six-month run in the West End. Those who’ve come to expect epics from the dramatist behind Jerusalem and The Ferryman might be surprised by what’s in store: rather than being an aggressive fantasia on national themes, Hills is a minute work in a massive package, a delicate heartbreaker of a family drama about the secret that drove apart a close-knit quartet of sisters.

The central location is the Seaview Luxury Guesthouse and Spa, a stately old bed-and-breakfast in the seaside town of Blackpool, circa 1976. It is in the public parlor that three siblings, spinster Jill (Helena Wilson), anxious Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond), and furious Gloria (Leanne Best) have gathered to await the arrival of their estranged sister Joan, who, with any luck, will show up before their ailing mother succumbs to cancer upstairs. You can see the layers of dust and grime practically radiating off the tables and chairs in Rob Howell’s staggering set, with dimly lit staircases, hallways, and bedrooms that extend well into the flies. Like the play itself, the Seaview is large but small: you get the sense that everyone can hear everything. And of course, they do.

We meet Mom in flashbacks to 1955. Veronica (Laura Donnelly) is the determined proprietor of the Seaview, who fantasizes about turning her four daughters (Nancy Allsop as Gloria, Nicola Turner as Jill, Sophia Ally as Ruby, and Lara McDonnell as Joan) into a singing group à la the Andrews Sisters. She doggedly rehearses their syncopated choreography and vocal harmonies in the kitchen ahead of a big break that may never come — and while she thinks that all her kids are talented, it’s clear t that luminous 15-year-old Joan is the standout. When the girls are given the chance to audition for an American agent who claims to have discovered Nat “King” Cole (David Wilson Barnes, chilling in his plainness), Veronica makes a devastating choice that seals all their fates, one that might even make Mama Rose blush.

I had assorted qualms with Butterworth’s script and director Sam Mendes’s staging of it when I saw the play this past February in London. The seeds were there, and there were moments of both great beauty and even greater heartache, but there was something lackadaisical about it all. At over three hours, conversations went on too long and spun their wheels. Ancillary characters stole focus. The climax wasn’t quite there, either, adding up to an ending that was less of a definitive conclusion and more of a stoppage. The arcs of the four sisters were clipped in exchange for a moderately upbeat ending.

To their credit, both Butterworth and Mendes have done excellent work sharpening the material for Broadway. Trimming the running time by 15 minutes and putting less emphasis on some of the supporting roles has made a world of difference in terms of pacing (though there are still at least two characters that could be cut). More essentially, a nearly complete overhaul of the third act has not only deepened the arcs for all four sisters, but clarified the story that Butterworth is telling: how one person’s trauma and survival effects everyone in their orbit.

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.

The centerpiece is Donnelly in the dual roles of Veronica and her Americanized hippy daughter Joan. Both have impossibly tough and headstrong exteriors surrounding delicate and unapologetic interiors, both survivors against the odds, damaged by life and going on despite it. But their experiences also carry over to Jill, Ruby, and Gloria. The events of the past have led Lovibond’s hopeful Ruby into adulthood with alarming panic attacks, and caused Wilson’s fragile Jill to close herself off from the world. As for Gloria, you can see the ferocious resentment and jealousy simmering in Best’s eyes. This is acting at its highest caliber.

It’s an odd bit of theatrical synchronicity that The Hills of California will be playing next door to its spiritual cousin, Gypsy, in a couple of months. They would make for an intense double-header, and I can’t help wonder how they might be in conversation with each other. But The Hills of California is more than satisfying experience on its own. The Broadway edition has become my favorite Jez Butterworth play yet, and that’s saying something.