Today is Sunday, December 1, 2024. It’s a new month and closer to the Apocalypse. People might disagree with me about this grim vision of the future that I have for this country under a second Dump administration, but only time will tell. Of course, we can say it’s much too early to prophesy the future, but you can’t say all of the experts didn’t warn us if voters decided to cast their lot with this domestic terror threat once more. Now is the time to enjoy oneself before the storm ravages the planet.

To that end, Elliot and I attended a 2 p.m. Broadway showing of The Hills of California by Jez Butterworth who wrote Jerusalem and The Ferryman, both seen on Broadway some years back. I’m sorry to say I have not seen these earlier productions by this very talented playwright. We had ordered tickets online for this play a week or two earlier, as well as reserving a table for two at Smith & Wollensky, the popular steakhouse, for 5:30 after the play.

The ambitious, captivating domestic drama straddles dual worlds of dreams and reality as it shuttles between two pivotal time periods in the lives of the Webb family.

Seesawing between the two time periods, the play opens in the late 1970s (actually, 1976) during a debilitating heat wave, with unmarried Jill (Helena Wilson) who has remained home with her ailing mum in a seaside resort called Seaview Guest House (with no view of the sea), as mentioned by various characters during the play’s two-hour-and-45-minute run. The plot follows four daughters who gather at the mother’s Blackpool home (which we actually visited two years ago) to say goodbye to their dying mother.

The set, like the story, swivels between past and present, with a parallel cast showing the daughters as girls being groomed by their disciplined and stern mother Veronica (Laura Donnelly) to become the Webb Sisters, a musical act in the mold of the Andrews Sisters, a real-life singing trio who struck musical gold in America during the 30s, 40s, and even later. When a big-time American agent comes to town, Veronica sees a golden opportunity for her daughters, but it comes at a high price for this family.

The sisters then enter the shabby parlor room of the guest house, with their mother unseen, upstairs in her room. There is Jill, who I mentioned above, who looks like a librarian, with spectacles and prim demeanor. She is her mother’s caregiver; she hasn’t left the Webb hearth to take care of her ailing mother and she says in one moving monologue that she’s 32 and a virgin. Next comes Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond), bored in her life and subject to strangely unexplained fits that resemble panic attacks. Then there is Gloria (Leanne Best) who is the loudest of the four sisters, broiled in jealousy, and throwing one verbal grenade after another at anyone within firing range. The fourth sister, Joan (also played by Donnelly in her adult incarnation) is the only sibling who has managed to strike out on her own by fleeing to California and not returning home for two decades. She hasn’t answered her mother’s letters or called in all of that time, but she has assured Jill that she will come back to Blackpool, but doesn’t make her entrance until far into Act III, wearing an Afghan coat and resembling a Carole King tribute act.

As the Webb Sisters pursue stardom during the 1950s, it’s established that times and tastes have changed, as the big-time agent, Luther St. John (David Wilson Barnes), tries to tell Veronica that the Andrews Sisters bit is antiquated already. There is a snatch of dialogue where St. John asks Veronica if she has heard of Elvis Presley, and she responds, “I don’t understand what you’re saying!” The agent breaks the news to the mother that he’s only interested in one daughter, Joan, and he asks Veronica if he can hear her sing upstairs in one of the rooms in the guesthouse. She is only 15 at the time of this momentous lapse in her mother’s decision to allow this adult stranger to go upstairs with her nubile daughter in order to achieve her dream of stardom for her daughters, if it only devolves to one daughter to have it realized. Naturally, this decision ends in personal tragedy for all involved.

What I didn’t like about the play were the Northern accents of the four principals and other characters. I had trouble ascertaining what was being said at times by most of the actors on stage. Also, the men here – a husband of Gloria, the piano accompanist who works with Veronica and her daughters, the husband of Ruby – seem like peripheral characters that illuminate or comment on the women’s world. There are two children of Gloria and Bill who have not much to say or do. One snatch of dialogue between father and son occurs in the third act when Bill tells his son to listen to his sister, whereupon the boy hugs his father longingly. I thought that little tableau was very effective.

The imagery of the title of the play for those who are interested, since the action of the play takes place in England, not America, is that the sisters in Act II sing a Johnny Mercer song that gives the play its title (“The hills of California are waiting for you”) which resonates with the one sister who tried to escape the drab world of Blackpool to strike it rich in California – but really doesn’t when she returns home and reveals what she actually experienced while living in the golden state. At one point, she tells her curious sisters that she had to take a job delivering pizza to celebrities living in Beverly Hills. One of her customers, it so happens, turns out to be Maxine Andrews, of the Andrews Sisters, who was still alive in 1976 (she died in 1995) and who invites her in to share pizza and drinks with her and her sister Patty, the two surviving members of the singing troupe. At the end of the story, Joan hints that she made the whole narrative up.

Again, there is the collision of fantasy and reality as embodied in the four Webb sisters and their widowed mother. The standout here among the cast is Laura Donnelly who is cast as the second oldest sister, Joan, and as the loving but chilling mother who is almost patterned after Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother in Gypsy without her own dreams of attaining stardom for herself.

If you have a good ear for British accents, go see this play. I believe it’s closing around December 22, so you have some time still to see it.

Another week to enjoy the cold weather here in New York.

And so it went!

Here is the playbill from today’s play. I forgot to mention that the play was directed by Sam Mendes who has directed Butterworth’s plays in the past.