If I hadn't just returned from California, and experienced crossing some hills there, I might have reacted differently to the Jez Butterworth play, The Hills of California, we saw in New York on December 8. The title is drawn, as it happens, from a Johnny Mercer song, so the play's dealing with California is its central theme, about the return of the oldest of four sisters who had formed a singing quartet after she had not been in communication with her family since leaving for California about two decades before.
The play received excellent reviews in New York, from both the Times and the New Yorker. The London critics were not a kind: they pointed out that the play is long and meandering, and indulges in lots of unrelated stuff; the return of Joan, the oldest and most talented sister brings out, of course, that she has not succeeded any more than her younger siblings, who haven't either. Nor has their dominating mother, who only realizes and never really accepts that she has trained them to sing harmoniously in a girl group on the model of the Andrews Sisters.
A talent scout for US TV points out to her that the Andrews Sisters were already in decline as a successful act and were virtually invisible to producers looking for new styles of singing. One is led to wonder what attention Veronica, the mother, had been paying for all those years she had been rigorously training her four daughters to where music was heading.
Laura Donnelly, who originated the double role of Veronica and Joan, and is Jez Butterworth's partner, gives a bravura performance. We see her twenty years earlier when the girls are teens, and then when they are grown up and dissatisfied with their lives. They have to adjust quickly to the newly found fact that Joan was no more successful than they have been. Donnelly is excellent in both roles.
I was drawn to see this play on Broadway by my having seen two of Butterworth's previous plays, Jerusalem in London and The Ferryman in New York. He seems to have an ability to stir the New York critics into a positive frame of mind where they shout out hosannas for his product. To me, Jerusalem was exceedingly English and I was amazed it had been brought to New York at all; the secret quality it contained, however, was the leading role performed by Mark Rylance, whom I would classify as the finest currently active actor I've seen.
The large cast is excellent, as an equally vast ensemble was in The Ferryman, which has a plot set in The Troubles in Northern Ireland which is more clearly drawn than this story. Jerusalem's title, by the way, refers to Blake's famous poem comparing England to the legendary ideal of ancient Jerusalem. It is about a bunch of drifters who are mesmerized by a societal dropout (played by Rylance) who is unable to and does not even want at heart to be their leader.
Even the basic background of The Hills was obscured, especially in the first act, by the difficult-to-follow accents of the leading players, most of whom were in the original London production. They also often addressed the rear or the side of the stage, at low volume, which made it even harder, but by the second and third acts, most of these problems, admittedly relying on the audience, had been resolved.
What hadn't been, though, was the matter that the play's issues remain essentially unaddressed, as Joan gives only a brief account of how she fared in California: she may ave had a few acting or singing gigs but in the end, was far from a success. None of the others, despite their fine singing attributes, honed by the relentless workouts their mother gave them, made it in any significant way, either. It all comes back to the critical visit of the talent scout, who also precipitates a family crisis by his actions.
The show will be on the boards for another month and in many ways, it's a theatrical attraction that hols your interest. Despite its almost three-hour duration, it doesn't drag. But I don't expect that many who have seen or will see it got a whole lot more out of it than I did. As it happens, Butterworth and his brother have written the screenplay for what looks to be a top-notch streaming series, The Agency, a CIA story set in London, and based on a French series, The Bureau.
