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.