Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond, Helena Wilson, Laura Donnelly (Photo: Joan Marcus)

The Hills of California

By Marc Miller

The Hills of California, to begin with, isn't about California, or even hills. The title of Jez Butterworth's great big Broadway play refers to some mid-20th century Johnny Mercer pop ballad, not a famous one, that receives several renditions here, along with Rodgers and Hart and other American songbook standards. At once a searing look at familial conflicts, a study of the ravages of time, and a show-biz tale with parallels to, of all things, Gypsy, it boasts a huge cast by current standards and a nearly three-hour running time. The hours, let's hastily add, skip right by.

But you have to get your bearings first, and in a Jez Butterworth play that can be a challenge. As in his previous Broadway hit, The Ferryman, there are, first of all, the accents to contend with. Here we're in Blackpool, on the southern British coast, in 1976, with frequent flashbacks to 1955. Veronica Webb (Laura Donnelly), owner of a struggling and rather shabby seaside resort, lies upstairs and offstage, where her demise from stomach cancer is imminent.

Three of her four grown daughters show up soon, and the arrival of the fourth is the subject of much speculation. Jill (Helena Wilson) is a befuddled thirtysomething, a wistful nonentity who gave up whatever vague ambitions she had to take care of Veronica. Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond) is unhappy and argumentative, though not as ill-tempered as Gloria (Leanne Best), who's brought her two teenage kids and agreeable, browbeaten husband (Richard Short), while Ruby harasses her own hard-drinking spouse (Bryan Dick). The relationships are a bit difficult to suss out at first, and surely that's because American ears untutored in the local Blackpool twisted vowels and rapid dialogue delivery may well miss every third word or so. For the first act, at least; by the second, mine adjusted, and the play consequently improved.

Two decades prior, the widowed Veronica-her husband, if he was that, perished in the war, on various dates she invents to impress people-was determined to turn her girls into a successful singing group. So we flash back and meet a whole new set of daughters (Nancy Allsop, Nicola Turner, Sophia Ally, and Lara McDonnell), McDonnell portraying Joan, the absent daughter in 1976 and clearly the most talented among the four. Veronica's exhortations to the quartet have a distinctively Momma Rose ring to them, and Donnelly's hectoring-mixed-with-deception-and-affection suggests she might, in fact, make a splendid Rose.

Nancy Allsop, Nicola Turner, Sophia Ally, Lara McDonnell (Photo: Joan Marcus)

The sister act, middling-to-good, is distinctly patterned on that of the Andrews Sisters, who by 1955 were already something of a throwback, and that helps explain why the Webb Sisters aren't going anywhere. If you have a particular affection for Andrews Sisters lore, or references to near-forgotten British entertainers like Max Bygraves and Ken Dodd, this is your show. Butterworth, though, does get his show biz history a bit scrambled. Elvis wasn't a household word in 1955; Charlie's Angels hadn't happened by the summer of '76; and the mentions of Tommy Steele and Bobby Darin are years off.

So we're dealing mostly with a discontented siblings reunion under dire circumstances, and visits to the past that help explain the resentments that have piled up across the years. Butterworth colors in the details slowly, like a black-and-white drawing undergoing gradual Crayola-ization, and The Hills of California begins to make more and more sense. The sisters have moments of jovial nostalgia, but far more of differently remembered events and out-and-out rage. And we come to see how Veronica has fomented the disharmony, playing favorites among the girls while clinging, Rose-like, to her own never-realized ambitions.

Matters come to a head with the eventual arrival of the older Joan (Donnelly again), probably on some drug or other, and having, for reasons I can't fathom, lost her impenetrable Blackpool accent (but at least that makes her easier to understand). She's in aging-California-hippie mode, she's had a singing career of sorts, and she'll drive The Hills of California to its conclusion. The sisterly conflicts reach operatic pitch, with Gloria bitter, Ruby panicky, Jill trying to broker a detente, and Joan confronting her former self and how it evolved into her present one. It's a splendid scene, and the four actors, under Sam Mendes' surgically precise direction, are letter-perfect, with Donnelly underscoring how Joan so manifestly is her mother's daughter.

Laura Donnelly (Photo: Joan Marcus)

The best thing about The Hills of California is, it's big. Big set, by Rob Howell, with a surprising revolve, from the inn's frayed tiki-bar parlor to its back kitchen. Big cast, beyond the two sets of Webb sisters. Many of the men's roles are so small-a doctor with a few lines, a guest who mutters something and heads up Howell's multilevel stairs, Gloria's utterly inconsequential son-that Butterworth easily needn't have bothered with them. Which may be a point he's making: For a family as matriarchal as this in these two male-dominated decades, with the mother calling all the shots and meting out all the discipline, men are at best a distraction. And big themes: How destructive dreams of glory can be, how families come apart, how they can or can't glue themselves back together.

If you didn't catch The Ferryman during its 2018-19 Broadway run, you'll probably find The Hills of California mesmerizing. If you did, and were thrilled by its edge-of-your-seat balancing of history, politics, and family, you may think this one a bit of a letdown. Impeccably produced, impressively acted, never uninteresting, yes. But not as resonant or crowded with incident as The Ferryman. And then there are those accents.

The Hills of California
At the Broadhurst Theatre
235 W. 44th St., New York
Through December 22