Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

It’s no Jerusalem: Jez Butterworth’s Hills of California, at Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed

Plus: a play about Wilko Johnson that captures the Dr Feelgood guitarist brilliantly

Laura Donnelly as the ambitious mother Veronica and Lara McDonnell as her daughter Joan in The Hills of California [Mark Douet] 
issue 17 February 2024

Fifteen years after penning his mega-hit Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth has knocked out a new drama. The slightly baffling title, The Hills of California, refers to a hit by Johnny Mercer (the US songwriter not the MP for Plymouth) and it suggests American themes and locations. But the show is set in a knackered old Blackpool boarding house in the 1970s, where three sisters are waiting for their elderly mum to croak.

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