“The Hills of California” Brings a New Ending on Broadway

Jez Butterworth has done it again.  His play Jerusalem is frequently referred to as the best play of the Century and others believe that The Ferryman topped that.  The Hills of California, however, with its revised ending now on Broadway is most certainly a contender.

Butterworth’s credentials are impressive and he has been celebrated with many awards including The Laurence Olivier Award for best comedy for his play MOJO in 1995, The Laurence Olivier Award for The Ferryman in 2018 and the Tony Award for The Ferryman in 2019.  In addition to his plays which have been very well received, he has made a major contribution to the arts as a screenwriter.  A few of them are Fair Game, Ford vs.Ferrari, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Blood Runs Coal and the James Bond movie Spectre which he wrote at the urging of his friend Sam Mendes, who was also the director of The Ferryman and The Hills of California.

Sam Mendes is a highly regarded and decorated stage and film director, known for his reinvention of stage musicals Cabaret, Oliver, Company and Gypsy.  He served as the head of the Donmar Warehouse from 1900 to 2002 and transformed it into one of the most important and fashionable playhouses in London.  He is the recipient of 3 Laurence Olivier Awards for Company, Twelfth Night and The Ferryman and  2 Tony Awards for his work on Broadway for The Ferryman and The Lehman Trilogy.  In the world of film he won an Academy Award for best director in 1999 for American Beauty. Among other films he directed The Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, 1917, Empire of Light and 2 James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre.

The British costume and set designer Rob Howell, primarily known for his work in London theater created the very effective set used in The Hills of California.  Howell has won The Laurence Olivier Award  3 times, and one in particular for Matilda the Musical in 2012.  In addition he has won 5 Tony Awards.

This immediate play is centered on a mother and her four grown daughters who have gathered in the family owned, dilapidated guesthouse Seaview in the resort of Blackpool in England.  Seaview itself is a fiction since one cannot view the sea from any of its windows or doors.   The mother, Veronica Donnelly, dying of cancer, lies in an upstairs bedroom and is never seen in the present time.

Mrs. Donnelly, a middle aged widow at an earlier time in the play, is determined to transform her young daughters into a group resembling The Andrew Sisters.  She is unaware that the music represented by that trio is no longer popular yet she persists in her determination to achieve what she perceives to be success.  Veronica behaves less like a mother than as a voice coach and she is ruthlessly ambitious and not averse to sacrificing her children to achieve her ends.  Very simply stated Veronica Donnelly makes Mama Rose (Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother) look like an angel.  Her method of parenting has left indelible scars on her daughters which are apparent when we become acquainted with them as seriously impaired adults.  The actors who portray the young sisters are Nicola Turner as Jill, Sophia Ally as Ruby, Nancy Allsop as  Gloria and Lara McDonnell as Joan.

Butterworth shifts the scenes which depict the sisters as adolescents in 1955 to their grown-up selves in the heat wave of 1976 with the use of a foreboding set rotating to indicate changing times and which includes an unusually high staircase, itself central to the plot.  In this more immediate time we find 3 of the sisters awaiting the arrival of the eldest, Joan,, who had escaped the nightmare of her life to live in California.  She is the one for whom Veronica has the greatest guilt and she has been unresponsive to her mother’s attempts to reach her.

The three sisters who are present include Jill (the retiring spinster type who has been caring for her mother, played by Helena Wilson), Ruby (seemingly bored but suffering from panic attacks, played by Ophelia Lovibond) and Gloria (resentful and overwhelmed with jealousy, played by Leanne Best).  They quarrel and take issue with one another, hopeful that Joan would return at all to see their mother and provide her with a moment of peace as awaits death.

The play employs the use of song-and-dance acts similar to those in fashion in the 1950’s and the girls are encouraged to perform as the Webb Sisters for a supposedly famous American agent which Veronica mistakes as an opportunity for success.  He parades himself as having once been the agent for Nat King Cole and is presently assuming that role for Perry Como.  Despite all suspicions raised Veronica allows him to have Joan perform for him individually and privately.

One of the most interesting techniques employed by Butterworth is that of double-casting.  The actor Laura Donnelly portrays the middle aged Veronica and then in Act 3 of the returning grown-up Joan.   Her performance is masterful in each case.

Although the play received good notices in the UK, a very unusual event occurred when Butterworth deemed it essential to change the ending of the play for the Broadway production.  On the London stage Joan returns with a 5-month old baby named Betty Ocean Sky who she is delivering for the care of her sister Ruby which she claims will be “Just while I get back on my feet”.  This is a phrase that she endlessly repeats.  Ruby refuses to accommodate her but true to form Jill accepts the responsibility.  At this point a doctor arrives to assist the ailing Veronica with a large dose of morphine to end her agony and the sisters gather at the piano, with the crying infant, and sing Dream a Little Dream Of Me.

In New York the sisters anxiously await the arrival of Joan who shows up with attitude and fabricated stories of her life in California.  Jill in particular tries to persuade her to go upstairs and provide comfort for her mother and she seems to  acquiesce but as she begins to mount the darkened staircase she sees the younger version of herself at the top of the stairs descending towards her, reminding her of the horror of the rape for which she rightfully blames her mother and subsequently the cause of her ruined life.  She backs down the staircase and the stage shifts with the younger sisters surrounding the seated young Joan.  They sing Dream a Little Dream Of Me.  Each of the sisters break away and leave Joan sitting and singing alone as the adult Joan appears and walks behind her to leave and then…fade to Black.