Follow Jez Butterworth’s compulsive plays and you can catch the drift of the British theatre over four decades. Mojo (1996): zoot suits and snarls; the urban snap of Pinter. Jerusalem (2009): dark and glorious, a lament for, and celebration of, a fraying countryside. The Ferryman (2017): a tribute to the great lift of Irish dramatic writing.
Now The Hills of California: part of the slow female-isation of the stage. Last week, Beth Steel’s rousing Till the Stars Come Down showed – with a great lash of language and velocity of action – sisters coming together for a disruptive family wedding in their Nottinghamshire home. In Butterworth’s new play, women gather around their dying mother in the Blackpool boarding house where they spent their 1950s childhoods some 20 years earlier. The resort’s pizazz has faded but illusions linger.
