*This house. It’s called ‘Sea View’. It’s just I’ve looked out of every window, and you can’t. You can’t see the sea.*
Blackpool, 1976. The driest summer in 200 years. The beaches are packed. The hotels are heaving. In the sweltering backstreets, far from the choc ices and donkey rides, the Webb Sisters are returning to their mother's run-down guest house, as she lies dying upstairs.
Following their multi award-winning triumph *The Ferryman*, Jez Butterworth, writer of *Jerusalem*, resumes his partnership with Sam Mendes, director of *The Lehman Trilogy*, to bring you The Hills of California.
__*The Hills of California* plays at Harold Pinter Theatre from 27 January 2024 for a strictly limited season.__
What a frustrating evening. Jez Butterworth’s eagerly awaited new drama comes tantalisingly close to sweeping us off our feet: Laura Donnelly’s hypnotic central performance as Veronica, matriarch of a Blackpool guesthouse, will certainly linger in the memory. Yet in the end, the director Sam Mendes hasn’t been able to impose enough discipline on Butterworth’s penchant for baggy, poetic speeches.
Line by line, scene by scene, The Hills of California holds the attention. It’s possibly only because of the exalted standards expected of Butterworth that somehow it remains an interesting evening rather than a revelatory one.
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