“The Hills of California,” about four sisters in their thirties called back to their childhood home, to attend to their dying mother, and relive their traumatic childhood brush with fame, is the fourth play by British playwright Jez Butterworth to make it to Broadway. Some theatergoers might initially feel almost as disappointed in this play as the characters in it feel towards how their lives have turned out.

 But what “The Hills of California” does eventually offer, if you can decipher the cast’s English accents and commit to the nearly three hour running time, is the playwright’s finely tuned sense of irony, which subtly upends our expectations,. His well-crafted characters are more nuanced than we might at first realize, and they are brought to life under the direction of Sam Mendes by a large cast (most making their Broadway debuts) led by Laura Donnelly.

Leanne Best (“Gloria”), Ophelia Lovibond (“Ruby”), Helena Wilson (“Jill”), and Laura Donnelly (“Joan”)

While their mother and former taskmaster Veronica is dying upstairs, the four women arrive  back in their childhood home in 1976,  twenty years after Veronica drilled her children daily in order to polish a marketable musical act, the Webb Sisters, modeled after the Andrews Sister. This turned out not to be so marketable. As we see in flashbacks to the 1950s with younger versions of the characters,  the Webb Sisters are not just inspired by the Andrews Sisters, they copy their every song, move and patter — at a time when the popularity of their music had been supplanted by rock n roll. The Andrews Sisters were renowned for their close harmony. The Webb sisters have become distant and disharmonious, returning to the place where their now-thwarted dreams began.

The problem is not that the story is familiar, although in many ways it is; the overbearing stage mother overseeing dated routines (Madame Rose in “Gypsy,” anyone?) It’s that Butterworth’s three previous productions were so memorable. “The Hills of California” doesn’t have a “once-in-a-lifetime” performance like Mark Rylance’s in “Jerusalem”  (2011.) “The Ferryman,” which won the Tony for Best Play in 2019, offered not just an epic connection to the real-life Troubles in Belfast; it featured a live baby, bunny, and goose.  

True,  in “The Hills of California” the younger sisters sing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” which is fun – but that song has been sung in four previous Broadway productions, and it simply can’t compete with a baby.

Still, there are small delights throughout. 

The title of the play is taken from a song by Johnny Mercer (“You’ll settle down forever and never stray from the view/The hills of California are waiting for you”), which right away serves as one of the many contrasts between their aspirations and their reality. Another: The home to which the sisters return one by one was a guesthouse in a never-fashionable part of the seaside resort of Blackpool, about an hour north of Liverpool, that Veronica called Seaview. But there’s no view of the sea anywhere in the building.
“I believe they call it poetic license,” says Jill, the first sister we see, the only one who has stayed in Blackpool Similarly, we’re told different stories about how Veronica wound up a single mother raising four daughters.

“Your father, was he a sailor?” asks a piano tuner who has been working in the parlor (so that’s what that ping-ping underscoring was about!)  
“No,” Jill answers. “He was the Boogie Boogie Bugle Boy From Company B.”

The piano tuner is impressed with her “cheeky mouth,” so much like her mother’s. “Miss Cheeky Chops. Can I call you Miss Cheeky Chops? 

“No.”

At one point, the piano tuner offers a comment that feels like a theme: The piano has been so neglected for so long that it’s  beyond repair.

“Will it play?” Jill asks.

“What? Oh it’ll play. If they’ve had a drink.”

Jill is followed by her sister Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond), who complains a lot and treats her husband with contempt, and then Gloria (Leanne Best) who mistreats both her husband and her two children; she’s the character most full of rage and resentment. And then there’s Joan – or, rather, there isn’t.  She’s the only one to move to California. Jill, the optimist, is sure Joan will show up, but the others are doubtful: She hasn’t answered any of her mother’s letters in years.

Before we meet Joan in the 1970s, Rob Howell’s sumptuous set turns and we are back in the 1950s, where we see Veronica (Donnelly) putting her girls through their paces.

It’s not until Act III  that Joan (Donnelly again) finally makes an entrance, one I found terrifically theatrical, and befitting her character.  After her entrance, the play shifts tones, with truth-telling at long last, and some surprises  — including how some of the characters react to Joan. 

“The Hills of California” turns out to pivot around a traumatic event that can’t withstand much scrutiny (I overheard some theatergoers debating it outside the Broadhurst after the show, with reactions ranging from puzzlement to a theory that it’s a metaphor to certainty that we are meant to take it literally.) But so much in that final Act otherwise feels so right — surprising, yes, but only because we’re so used to such narratives on stage or screen going in a direction we would like it to go, or fear most it will go. In real life, more often than not, the piano is beyond repair, but it still plays.

The Hills of California
Broadhurst Theater through December 22
Running time: 2 hours and 50 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission after Act One and a 2-minute pause after Act Two.
Tickets: $74-$351. (Digital Lottery: $52. In person rush: $37)
Written by Jez Butterworth
Directed by Sam Mendes
Scenic and costume design by Rob Howell, lighting design by Natasha Chivers, composer, sound design and arrangements by Nick Powell, choreography by Ellen Kane, Campbell Young Associates (wigs, hair & makeup design), Candida Caldicot (musical supervision and arrangements), Kate Wilson (dialect coach), Cast: Laura Donnelly as Veronica/Joan; Leanne Best as Gloria; Ophelia Lovibond as Ruby; Helena Wilson as Jill; Nancy Allsop as Young Gloria; Sophia Ally as Young Ruby; Lara McDonnell as Young Joan; and Nicola Turner as Young Jill, David Wilson Barnes, Ta’Rea Campbell, Bryan Dick, Richard Lumsden, Richard Short, Liam Bixby, Ellyn Heald, Max Roll, and Cameron Scoggins.
Photographs by Joan Marcus