Theatre! More theatre! Never let it stop. I’ve not seen any Butterworth before, but his reputation precedes him and having seen Mendes’ direction on The Lehmann Trilogy, the combination of the two was an easy sell. So I went in pretty much blind.
There’s an element to, just, how funny can a play be? I don’t mean to damn an entire art form, but playwrights are not best known for their senses of humour. Maybe it’s more the audience doesn’t know how to respond - get some stand up in them and teach them the rules, someone, please. The Hills Of California isn’t unfunny, but it’s better when it’s not trying to be funny.
It’s three acts! With two intervals! Thank god it’s a matinee or I’d be here all night. It pretty much earns it, though. We flit between the present and the past, the four daughters of a formidable woman in their youth vying to become a pop group, and then gathering around on her deathbed in adulthood. It does kind of need the space, and the third act does take a very specific turn to justify it, with the doubling up of a certain cast member.
The crux of the piece, and what most of the first two acts leads to, is the end of the second act. The four kids auditioning in their kitchen for Perry Como’s manager, who then asks the mum for just Joan to sing, and then asks for her to sing to him by herself in one of the bedrooms…
It is heartbreaking. Genuinely, utterly heartbreaking. The third act, dealing with the aftermath of that, having re-contextualised the relationship between the four siblings, the tug between forgiveness and not, to what extent Joan is complicit, to what extent can a 15 year old be complicit, is still good, but it never quite fully tied together for me. Glimmers of something, though.