The four sisters with verve but only marginal talent audition for an agent in The Hills of California / Photos by Joan Marcus.
(Once again, Florida Theater On Stage is personally reviewing current shows playing on and off-Broadway. Today, we start with the superb drama about ambition, dreams and family relationships, The Hills of California. Which is closing in December. Coming up over the next few days, A Wonderful World, the Louis Armstrong musical which began at Miami New Drama, also the surprising Sunset Blvd. which bears little resemblance to any production you have seen of this musical, then The Notebook which is closing but will be touring locally soon, then the reimagining of Our Town starring Jim Parsons.)
By Bill Hirschman
The greatest tragedy in all theater is its fleeting existence, it’s disappearance into the ephemeral void.
Once the performance is over, it never can be quite recaptured the next night. More to the point, once a production closes, it is gone forever except in the imperfect memories of the lucky few who saw it. Say, Laurette Taylor legendarily in The Glass Menagerie.
Therefore, if you are in New York or planning a visit before Dec. 22, give yourself a blessing and catch the final weeks of a glorious play you may or may not have heard of, The Hills of California.
Catch the magnificent piece now because with a cast of 22 and a challenging script, this superbly acted, directed and authored piece will not tour and will likely not be picked up by many, if any, regional theaters.
Intersecting driving ambition, dreams and family relationships deteriorating over time are tracked in the second act as a vital Blackpool mother in 1955 operates a rundown hotel and single-handedly attempts to mold her four young daughters whom she is determined to land as a vaudeville quartet.
But the first act catches them in 1976 when the far-flung estranged daughters join for the first time in years to attend the imminent death of that mother Veronica secluded on the second floor.
A linchpin moment that affects all three acts is an offstage incident that may involve sex or may not – but it is one that each person differently perceives and misperceives, interpreted and reinterpreted over time.
Yet another superb script by Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem and The Ferryman) has a reworked third act from the original that bowed in London. And renowned stage and film director Sam Mendes subtly, fluidly stages the journey expertly with an almost invisible hand visually, but an ability to elicit these profound performances.
But that is backing into most memorable aspect: an outstanding cast, most of whom have travelled across the Atlantic with the drama. Four teenage actresses play the daughters with varied personalities for the 1955 segment. Notably Lara McDonnell lands the oldest and most complicated daughter Joan.
Then four adult actresses populate the 1976 episodes, illustrating how these youngsters have evolved for better and worse in the intervening 21 years.
Laura Donnelly
And that, too, backs into the headline: Acclaimed Laura Donnelly plays Veronica in 1955 as an iron-willed yet devoted but fallibly driven mother. She pushes her daughters from performing at churches toward a dream of playing the London Palladium someday – or perhaps the big time in California. Unfortunately, we can see the truth that she can’t — the girls are charming but mediocre in talent.
Even when she implacably pushes them with a harshness that Mama Rose would have recognized, she is indeed desperately wanting them to have a better future. She declares with unadulterated passion, “I want them to live, to soar.”
Donnelly delivers all that and more, especially in one of the longest, most electric, trenchant pauses in many a season when she is agonizingly trying to make a life-altering decision. And then later, when Veronica is left alone to ruminate on its cost and what it says about her, the choice hangs in the air like stench, Donnelly chills.
But that’s not all. In the final act, Donnelly returns almost unrecognizable as the adult Joan who ran away to California, falling victim to the many temptations prevalent in that society. If Donnelly is not nominated for a Tony Award, there is no justice.
But the rest of the major players – the four young daughters on the edge of and toppling over puberty, and the three women playing them as adults – create individuals with distinct personalities.
The sole problem is because the cast is primarily British, you’ll wish there was closed-captioning because their words pour out like an open arterial wound.
The technical team is working at the top of the game, but special honor is due designer Rob Howell who creates a three-story re-creation of the Sea View, a grimy down on its luck hotel in both decades, with a multi-story stairway stolen from Hogwarts, aged jukebox, decrepit slot machine and cheap bamboo bar. Plus sound designer Nick Powell gently lays in the sound of animals outside, traffic and jovial organ music like a skating rink.
We know we’re not giving you much warning, but if you have any time or opportunity, do not miss this one.
The Hills of California runs at the Broadhurst Theatre. For tickets look at the website https://thehillsofcalifornia.com/
