6 / 10
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.
10 / 10
One of the most ingenious parts of Butterworth’s scripting is his ability to say more in the silences – and in what the characters fail to say – than in their actual conversations. There is a brief pause in the second act, which cleverly allows the audience a chance to digest what they have seen only moments before. A huge revelation explains why the Webb family has become so fractured, and the pregnant silence that follows is chilling.
Jez Butterworth’s new play, The Hills of California, just celebrated opening night and we've got the consensus from the critics!
All new production photos have been released for Jez Butterworth’s new play, The Hills of California. Check out the photos here!
Death comes to us all and the spectre of the end of life often brings families together who may not have met for years, even decades. Jez Butterworth’s bittersweet and bitingly funny new play, The Hills of California, draws both on this and how events are shaped by memory and by who remembers them.
All new rehearsal photos have been released for Jez Butterworth’s new play, The Hills of California. Check out the photos here!
Laura Donnelly (The Ferryman, The Nevers, Outlander), Leanne Best (Sweat, Ripper Street, Line of Duty), Ophelia Lovibond (Minx, W1A, The Effect) and Helena Wilson (Vogue World, Jack Absolute Flies Again, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern) lead the cast as the Webb family in Jez Butterworth's new play, The Hills of California.
| 2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
