*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.__
Butterworth’s writing is resonant but proceeds at far too languid a pace. Mendes would have done well to have trimmed the three-hour running time, especially given that much is withheld for too long, until a fiery tumble of revelations in the final half hour.
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.
2024 | West End |
West End |
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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