Jez Butterworth, who is maybe the most well liked younger Brit playwright lately (bear in mind his The Ferryman and Jerusalem a number of years again?) has a brand new play on the town known as The Hills of California. It opened a number of days in the past and I received a ticket for it whereas it was in previews the week earlier than final.
It’s, like most of his performs, a piece based mostly in reminiscence and in passing time and pale glory, and like Alan Bennett‘s performs (The Historical past Boys), and different Brit exhibits, it attracts out the night with performances of American pop songs. We’re in a seedy, overdecorated boarding home mislabeled SEA VIEW (“Poetic license,” murmurs Jill, the custodian) that takes in vacationers and two-hour couplings in a seaside resort someplace close to Blackpool. The home belongs to Veronica Webb whom we don’t meet within the current (1976) as a result of she’s upstairs, in nice ache, dying of most cancers. Her 4 daughters are imagined to assemble to provide the physician the go-ahead for an unofficial overdose of morphine. We meet the bitchy sister (Gloria), the horny sister (Ruby) and their husbands — they each received out whereas the going was good — and the outdated maid Jill who remains to be a virgin. And so they surprise the place Joan is, not that they’ve seen her for twenty years. She ran off to California. Why? And can she make it again in time? In time for what?
Nothing is resolved, together with the chords of the final track earlier than the ultimate curtain. And but every part is resolved.
Act II is about in 1955. Veronica is a horny martinet, flirting with all the boys about the home (one in every of whom claims to have connections within the music business), conserving her 4 fatherless daughters in line (what ship DID their father go down on?), rehearsing and competing and singing at open mic’s and church occasions. They do variations of the Andrews Sisters. They aren’t dangerous. However nobody desires the Andrews Sisters anymore. Nostalgia ain’t what it was. There’s this new factor known as rock n roll, and Veronica hasn’t received a deal with on it but, and the teenage women (Joan is 15) haven’t had time to choose it up but. And what worth is Veronica keen to pay — and what worth is Joan keen to pay — to get an audition with a giant agent. A quiet, shadowy fellow with a watch for teenage, um, expertise. Joan is singing in an upstairs bed room — the acoustics are higher than those within the kitchen, you see. After which she stops singing in mid lyric.
Act III is again in ’76. An odd lady in unusual garments sneaks into the home late at night time, rummaging within the kitchen for booze. It’s Joan! Now a full-fledged American floozie, with California accent and much too many California experiences. Texas too. New York too. Jill barely squeaks, “Did you must go away to have an abortion?” Joan is informal, “I’ve had a variety of abortions.” “Did you chop a file? Two?” “I ship pizzas.” Joan has forgotten every part. Virtually every part. She will be able to’t fairly carry herself to go to her mom’s room. She meets her 15-year-old self on the steps, in that spangled pink costume. The physician comes. They know why he’s there. They provide him a cup of tea, however he hasn’t time. He goes proper up. For the ocean view that isn’t seen from any window in the home.
How will we perceive the passing of time on this civilization? Regnal years or eras (Elizabethan, Victorian, Thatcherite) are out, out, out. Actions of the celebs are too predictable and too far-off. “The Struggle” means various things to totally different generations. We perceive passing time by pop music. That is actually true in Anglophonia — within the U.S. and Britain. Individuals can listing the hits as quick as you quantity the years. (I can’t, however I sat that stuff out.)
The Webb sisters maintain lapsing or reviving into forgotten pop songs (together with one in every of my favorites: “It By no means Entered My Thoughts”), and the funniest of Joan’s tales issues the night time she delivered pizza to the Andrews Sisters on their hillside in Hollywood and so they sang all night time. Nothing else is so vivid to fashionable humanity because the music they danced to once they have been younger, and nothing brings them again to their youth like that very same music, fifty years later. And due to fashionable know-how, the music has not advanced — it’s the identical music, the identical singers, the identical preparations, the identical cracks within the vinyl. I’ve received your data; she’s received you. And SHE is the previous, and we’re all headed down that gap.
Laura Donnelly does an incredible star flip because the important, horny, determined Veronica in Act II, then because the Yankee Joan in Act III. (She received an Olivier nomination for it and deserved it!) Helena Wilson is bleak, hopeful Jill. Leanne Greatest is bitchy Gloria. Rob Howell designed the superb, cluttered turntable set (I do love a superb turntable set, ever since My Honest Girl once I was eight). Sam Mendes directed. Don’t fear in regards to the British accents — you don’t want to grasp ALL the phrases.
Images: Joan Marcus
