Theatre in Review: The Hills of California (Broadhurst Theatre)

	Nancy Allsop, Nicola Turner, Sophia Ally, and Lara McDonnell. Photo: Joan Marcus

The Hills of California, which arrived riding a wave of critical praise, confirms that big ensemble dramas are back. Last season saw such big, rangy dramas as Appropriate and Stereophonic play to acclaim and full houses. Now, playwright Jez Butterworth deploys a couple of dozen characters across two decades in his richly detailed account of frustrated ambition and how a single dubious decision can alter the fortunes of an entire family. It also offers a tour-de-force leading role, a mother-daughter double act that Laura Donnelly performs to stunning effect.

The Hills of California is a kind of ghost story, set in a disused Blackpool guesthouse, the owner of which, Veronica Webb, is confined to her bedroom, dying of cancer. It is the summer of 1976 and, outside, a heat wave rages. Inside, thanks to Rob Howell's magisterial set design, you can practically feel the decay looming out of a gloom barely penetrated by sunlight fighting to get through tiny, smudged windows. In the dilapidated lounge, a ratty Tiki bar and a broken jukebox are the only souvenirs of past merriment. Overhead is a towering superstructure of stairways and landings, leading to rooms (named, whimsically, after the fifty US states). Even by the seedy standards of England's North, it is a grim sight; hope departed these premises a long, long time ago.

Jill, the only one of Veronica's daughters still living there, rattles off the venue's successive names, giving a sense of its rise and fall: "It was the Seaview Guesthouse. Then the Seaview Luxury Guesthouse. Then the Seaview Luxury Guesthouse and Spa. Then the Seaview Luxury Guesthouse. The Seaview Guesthouse...Now it's just Seaview." It's worth noting that, based on its location, any sea view is strictly notional. Natasha Chivers' lighting adds to the ghostly atmosphere that prevails.

At the end of her rope, Jill, a thirtysomething virgin who has spent her life tending to her mother, has alerted her sisters to come home for final goodbyes. None of them are happy to return to the scene of past crimes. They include the perpetually furious, profoundly dissatisfied Gloria, and Ruby, who shows up with her two warring children and spectacularly dull husband. As the gin flows and the sniping begins, the question is, will Joan, the oldest, arrive from California, to which she decamped two decades earlier, never to return?

The reason for Joan's estrangement is revealed in a flashback set in 1956. Veronica envisions her girls making it big as a girl group and is desperate to get ahead, get out of Blackpool, and get somewhere, anywhere. As played by Donnelly, Veronica is efficient, always beautifully turned out, a martinet who rules her daughters and guesthouse with an iron will. She feeds her daughters daily accounts of The Andrews Sisters' career struggles -- they are the girls' models in all things -- reviewing their performing prowess with a severely critical eye. Panic is setting in, however; a gig at a local church has been canceled, a previous performance being termed "too raucous, crude, and stimulating for a place of worship." Bookings are becoming impossible to find. Time and money are slipping away. "I look in their eyes and I can see the fire going out," Veronica says, for once letting a note of fear slip in.

Opportunity arrives in the form of Luther, an American talent agent, who, as it happens, is interested only in Joan, the most talented -- and rebellious -- of the girls. When he insists on a private session -- and all that implies -- with Joan, a choice must be made, and Joan, equally desperate to please Veronica and get out from under her, makes it. Donnelly's performance is packed with tour-de-force moments but, arguably, the greatest is the sight of Veronica standing alone, listening anxiously as Joan, in an offstage room with Luther, sings the Nat King Cole classic, "When I Fall in Love." The look on her face as the girl falls silent is quietly shattering.

The rest of The Hills of California follows what happens when Joan finally arrives, transformed almost beyond recognition by years of hard living, and Gloria, in high confrontational mode, bitterly demands an accounting for the disappointments that have shaped their lives. (For reasons I won't go into, Gloria has the most reason to feel aggrieved.) Amid the bickering and revelations -- the almost operatic venting of closely held frustrations -- Joan, who regards the world's sorrows with an ironic smile and a whatever shrug -- tells a fabulous story about a real-life, only-in-Hollywood encounter with Patty and Maxene Andrews. It's an extraordinary speech, a mockery of Veronica's long-faded ambitions that provides a moment of healing - only partial, to be sure -- for the sisters. Joan also figures in the most bravura piece of Sam Mendes' direction, when, mounting the steps to see the dying Veronica, she confronts her younger self, the teenager who went upstairs one night and never returned. It's as chilling as anything in the musical Follies.

Mendes gets enormously incisive work from his ensemble, especially the adult sisters. Leanne Best's Gloria enters in full fury; having received letters from a gossipy neighbor, she wants to know why "mum were out in the street in her bra at four in the morning. That there was more bottles by her back bins than round the back of the Legion?" (The characters speak in an authentic Northern English dialect.) Ophelia Lovibond's Ruby is a beauty sliding into middle age and finding little comfort in it. Of her conflict-averse husband, she says, "Do you know Dennis was born on the exact same day as Marlon Brando? And there, the similarity came to a shuddering halt." Helena Wilson's Jill is a girl in adult woman's clothing, worn down by responsibilities and occasionally breaking into the little song-and-dance she once performed at a local cinema, advertising Sea View's charms. First among them is Donnelly, steely, assured, terrified of losing her grip as Veronica, and wry and weathered as the adult Joan, a wilted flower child undone by too much California dreaming.

Among the large supporting cast, David Wilson Barnes, lying back and looking on appraisingly, curls of cigarette smoke forming around him, makes Luther into the smoothest of villains. Ta'rea Campbell is incisive as Penny, a nurse who discreetly lets it be known that a doctor can be found to increase Veronica's morphine and end her suffering. The young Webb sisters are vividly realized by Nancy Allsop, Nicola Turner, Sophia Ally, and Lara McDonnell.

Mendes' direction is vigorous and insightful, especially the staging (choreographed by Ellen Kane) of the girls' act, an Andrews Sisters tribute that reveals them as not untalented but robotic and overly drilled. In the devastating aftermath, Luther notes that the Andrews' day is over, news that hasn't yet reached Blackpool. "Have you heard of Elvis Presley?" he asks. "I'm sorry. I don't know what that is," says Veronica, for once utterly at a loss. The decapitation is so swift she doesn't realize her dream has been definitively guillotined.

The production is filled with meticulously rendered details. Howell's costumes neatly delineate the differences between two decades and Chivers' lighting carves the actors out of the darkness like a master sculptor. Nick Powell's sound design includes ambient boardwalk sounds and the strategic use of "Gimme Shelter" from a jukebox that mysteriously comes to life. It's strangely felicitous that The Hills of California has moved in next to the Majestic Theatre, where the Audra McDonald revival of Gypsy starts performances next month. Both portray deeply flawed stage mothers and the highly mixed legacies they leave for their children; at the moment, I'm hard-pressed to say which one is more gripping. --David Barbour