The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Mother trouble
The relationship between an over-ambitious mother and her damaged daughters makes for a muddled evening of drama, finds MARY CONWAY
hills
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
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The Hills of California
Harold Pinter Theatre
DISAPPOINTMENT is sadly the biggest takeaway from Jez Butterworth’s new play at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
Set in Blackpool in 1976 – with flashbacks to the late 1950s – the story is of four sisters congregating at their old family guesthouse to mark the approaching death of their mother Veronica, who grimly suffers in an upstairs bedroom. One sister Jill (Helena Wilson) still lives with her mother; two others Ruby and Gloria (Ophelia Lovibond and Leanne Best) arrive with bitter tales of the effort it’s cost them to get there; and Joan – well – will she bother to come at all? And thereby hangs the tale.
Blackpool is famed for its promise of seaside pleasure for ordinary people. It also represents a kind of tackiness and impoverished aspiration that is represented in the play. The guest house, for instance, is called Seaview. That it has no sea view is indicative of the gap between dreams and reality as witnessed in this place, and by Veronica who, in her younger days, mercilessly drills her teenage daughters to become a song and dance troupe in the vein of the Andrews Sisters.
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