By Jez Butterworth
Directed by Sam Mendes
Designed by Rob Howell
Composer, arranger, sound designer Nick Powell
Harold Pinter Theatre, London
Wednesday 13th March 2024, 14.00
CAST
Confusingly listed, first in groups online, then in the theatre programme in order of appearance. The play text sorts it out better. The four daughters of Veronica are Jillian, Ruby, Gloria and Joan.
Helena Wilson – Jillian
Natasha Magigi – Penny (nurse), Biddy (employee)
Richard Lumsden – Mr Potts (piano tuner)/ Joe Fogg (Guest, pianist)
Ophelia Lovibond – Ruby
Lucy Moran – Patty, Gloria’s daughter
Alfie Jackson – Tony, Gloria’s son
Leanne Best – Gloria
Shaun Dooley – Bill, Gloria’s husband / Mr Halliwell- guest
Bryan Dick – Dennis, Ruby’s husband / Jack Larkin- professional comedian
Laura Donnelly – Veronica, mother of the four Webb Sisters / Joan – her oldest daughter
Nancy Allsop- young Gloria
Nicola Turner- young Jill
Sophia Ally – young Ruby
Lara McDonnell – young Joan
Will Barratt- Mr Smith, guest
Georgina Hellier – Mrs Smith, guest
Corey Johnson – Luther St. John, music manager
Stevie Raine – Dr Rose
It’s set in Blackpool in 1976, the driest summer on record. We remember 1976, as we had just bought our first flat on the edge of the New Forest, where fires raged and roads were closed. As the nurse says in the play, the year has been June, July, July, July, July …
The Seaview is a guesthouse with no view of the sea, and is run down, no longer operating. My co-author of many years, Bernie Hartley, was a Blackpool lad. He worked on the trams as a student and frequented the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. I heard many tales. His mantra was ‘I’m from Blackpool. I’ve seen every con-trick in the book. You can’t fool me.’ He was fond of saying this during contract negotiations with our publishers. We took our kids to Blackpool once. It was rip-off central.
Veronica, the guesthouse owner, is dying of bowel cancer upstairs. We never see her. We start with her youngest of four daughters, Jillian (Helena Wilson), who is 32. She has stayed in Blackpool to look after her mother. She has brought down an old baby crib from the attic. It is full of memorabilia.
The visiting nurse, Penny (Natasha Magigi), comes down. Veronica is in great pain. There is a conversation on morphine … what we would now call assisted dying. The theme will return. I believe, as here, that it was done for years and no one talked about it until recently when it became a major topic. King George V’s eventual shuffling off this mortal coil was apparently timed for the radio … sorry, wireless … news. Interviews suggest the play’s theme was partly inspired by the death of Butterworth’s sister from cancer.
Penny sets an important plot point about ‘Seaview’ that will return for its bearing on veracity throughout:
Penny: I’ve looked out of every window, and you can’t … You can’t see the sea. Even on the top floor. You can see the car park. You can see the Bingo. If you lean right out you can see the Tower …
Jillian: I believe they call that poetic licence.
There were four daughters. Jillian has promised her mother that the oldest and favourite, Joan, will turn up in time to see her before she dies. Joan’s flight from California has been delayed. Jillian is agitated, and unwilling to listen to the nurse. Mr Potts (Richard Lumsden), the piano tuner emerges with a long tale about pianos, but he also has memories of Veronica in 1953, when she was a stunningly attractive woman.
Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond) arrives from Rochdale (which is not far away). Ruby’s husband, Dennis (Bryan Dick), has wandered off somewhere.She reminds Mr Potts of her mother- Ruby looks particularly attractive compared to the dowdy Jillian. Then two teenagers turn up, Gloria’s children. It’s apparent that the sisters aren’t that close from Ruby’s opening remark on seeing her niece and nephew: Who the fuck are you?
Next is Gloria (Leanne Best), the mother of the kids, with her husband, Bill (Shaun Dolley). She arrives in a fury, smacking the teenagers with a rolled up magazine. Her fury will not abate as the play progresses. She is well over-heated after a nine hour car trip with no air conditioning. Ruby’s Datsun has it. So the three are gathered. The two new arrivals are shocked at their mother’s state when they go up to look. The lack of family closeness comes back, Ruby and Gloria ask about the changes to the town, many are long-established, but new to them. Ruby and Jillian start singing the Seaview’s old advertising ditty, to Gloria’s fury.
They stop when they hear a shout from the dying mother above … JOAN!
The stage revolves fully to reveal a kitchen, the time changes to 1955. The new young cast of sisters takes over in gymslips. They sing the old Johnny Mercer song the Hills of California, from 1948. We meet the young Veronica of twenty years before … played by Laura Donnelly. She is the ultimate stage mum. Oh, I’ve met them. I worked on the Ken Dodd show and every one of The Diddymen (girls 12 to 14) had one with them.
The thing is she is rehearsing them to do a harmony dance stage act, based on songs by The Andrew Sisters. The Andrews Sisters were major stars in the days before rock ‘n’ roll. By 1955 they were closing in fast on their ‘Best Before’ date. They sold 80 million records in their career, their best-known song being Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from 1941. It’s the four Webb girls speciality song.
The Andrews Sisters made their fortunes imitating The Boswell Sisters, so Veronica thinks a third act can take over in the same style, and she’s grooming her girls to be that act. I know a little bit about the Andrews Sisters, which helped me. I’m not sure the majority of the audience would be that familiar, even though Veronica explains it clearly as she tells the girls the biographies, which they all know by heart anyway and can recite. The fact is that the Andrews Sisters trio broke up, with Patty going solo and deserting her sisters.
Patty Andrews: We had been together nearly all our lives. Then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died (in 1948) and then our father (in 1949). All three of us were upset, and we were at each other’s throats all the time.
Wikipedia, from Fox News obituary 2013
You see the link? Joan was to go solo and desert the other Webb Sisters. Jez Butterworth is knowledgeable on music, it’s obvious. That makes the Webb Sisters a strange choice of name by him. I have three albums by The (current) Webb Sisters … Charlie and Hattie Webb. They backed Leonard Cohen on his world tours. So, maybe he isn’t a Leonard Cohen fan!
Phone calls and visitors help create Veronica’s domineering personality. There’s Mr Halliwell, a guest who tries to come in via the kitchen rather than walk around the whole block (we assume the houses are terraced). She’s having none of it. Out he goes. It seems that the guests are semi-permanent, which happened in 1955. See Rattigan’s Separate Tables for a more sedate seaside hotel. Then there’s Mr and Mrs ‘Smith’. Veronica couldn’t give a fig about the Dirty Weekend assumed name, but she doesn’t want them smoking in their room. All the rooms are named after American states, a tribute to Veronica’s love of American World War II music.
The girls practise their harmonies. They are really good. Joe is another long term guest (or perhaps resident) who plays piano for them. Joan is lippy, and says really the wrong thing:
Joan: LaVerne Andrews is ugly as sin.
Veronica banishes her to a chair in a dark corner, where she forgets about her, because Jack Larkin (Bryan Dick) arrives. He’s a professional seaside comedian and another semi-permanent guest. He spills bad jokes right left and centre. Veronica is furious because the local Tabernacle Hall has refused to allow the girls to perform there again … their act is too suggestive. Jack hasn’t been paying his rent, getting by on the promise of finding the girls a big agent or manager. He claims a breakthrough, but he’ll only tell her privately. She dismisses the three girls, but it seems he’ll only tell her upstairs. It’s clear that this may be a regular event, but she says it’ll be outside the room this time.
As Jack leaves to go up, she remembers Joan has overheard. Joan stings her for half a crown not to tell her sisters. Veronica climbs the stairs.
The girls convene and Joan is persuading them to have a cigarette with her. Veronica returns … she has great news …
That’s the interval.
A lot resonated with Karen. Her drama teacher from age 10 to 18 was domineering. She was also back in the past, with theatre, just as much as Veronica was with music. She forced readings from James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan and the like. Noël Coward was her idea of ‘modern.’ She insisted that Karen always had to audition with Juliet because she was short and looked young. A fellow pupil was Jewish (stereotypically so in physical appearance) and he was made to audition as Shylock. This play brought it back to her, how she was never allowed to perform outside a set 50s style for years. Veronica was stuck in World War II, when the girls father died, and when she was gorgeous and much pursued, and we assume, caught. The father’s death is an ever-changing event in the play from torpedoed in 1943, to El Alamein, or a POW camp in Spain or on the beaches at D-Day in 1944. You can see poor Jillian (age 32 in 1976) trying to do the maths.
Act two
1976 returns. Penny, the nurse, asks if Jillian has had time to think about ‘phoning Dr Rose.’ She hasn’t told the sisters. Again, she wants to wait for Joan. Incidentally, Natasha Magigi is switching effortlessly from soft Jamaican accent for the nurse, to Lancashire accent for Biddy who works in the guesthouse in the 1955 sequences. Gloria’s resentment of Joan is boiling over. She imagines her dripping with money in California. Ruby and Jillian do manage to get together to sing, when there is another cry of Joan! from above.
The stage revolves to the 1955 kitchen. It’s been decorated like a church hall stage with fairy lights. The kitchen table is the stage. Joe, the pianist is late, to Veronica’s anger. Jack has come good. He is bringing the American manager, Luther St. John (Corey Johnson), to audition the girls. Veronica burbles away- there’s a key point again among this. The Andrews Sisters were a trio. The Webb Sisters are a quartet, but one can be dropped as not as good as the others, but kept on as an understudy. Yes, its Gloria who is droppable. The audition piece with kazoos is Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.
This is a superb piece of theatre. They create 1941. They’re far too precocious, as all those young female stars were, and no one was supposed to comment. It’s funny.
Luther tells her the truth. This is an Andrew Sisters imitation. You need originality. (In 1955 they had no idea that one day tribute bands like The Bootleg Beatles and the Australian Pink Floyd would fill large halls). Singing groups are gone, he explains. Has she heard of Elvis Presley? She hasn’t (but be fair it’s Blackpool, not Memphis and it’s 1955). He explains that he discovered Nat King Cole, who was indeed the best-selling artist of the previous few years. He’s only interested in one Webb sister, the 14 year old Joan. Will she sing solo for him? She starts. No, alone. In a private room. No, not in the parlour. Upstairs?
This is why Laura Donnelly should and probably will get best stage actress of 2024. It is powerful acting of the highest order. She know what his intentions are. Is she willing to sacrifice her daughter to the casting couch or not?
They don’t take an interval. Just signs with ‘Brief Pause.’ Why? well, Veronica (1955) will need to be transformed into Joan (1976).
Act three
1976. This opens with the two husbands, Bill and Dennis. Bill is repairing the juke box. Dennis has been out wandering about after another row with Ruby. They’re later joined by Bill and Gloria’s son, Tony. It’s a sharp contrast. You realise the play has been entirely female in focus until this point.
They go off. The repair hasn’t worked. Then the juke box lights up and springs into life. It’s playing Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones (from Let it Bleed), which has such a tremendous build up from guitars to bass to singing with Jagger joined by female vocal after the first verse from Merry Clayton … perhaps the Rolling Stones greatest moment … enter Joan, in flares and Afghan coat. Smoking. She’s incredibly laconic, permanently semi-stoned perhaps. A perfect song choice for her entry. (And I’m going to be charitable. It allegedly plays on a juke box. Juke boxes play 45 rpm singles. It was never released as a single. I’m embarrassed to mention this, but as I have a record collecting website, I feel forced to. Call me a nerd. Oh, you already have.) Still, it was indeed the perfect song.
The way the other three greet her is different. Ruby is sycophantic, Jillian relieved, Gloria aggressive. Remember which one was to be discarded?
I don’t want to plot spoil the rest. I’ve probably plot spoiled enough as it is, though if you read three other reviews you will pick it all up, and more. I’ll leave it mainly. A lot of dirty laundry gets aired regarding the consequences of that 1955 audition. Laura Donnelly has created a totally different powerful part in Joan, who has an American accent. Joan hasn’t been that successful after her initial American impact.
There was a moment when we sat bolt upright. I’ve contributed to The Band website for years and written extensively about them.
JOAN: I’m maybe gonna do this tour, see, singing backup for Rick Danko, from The Band.
I reckon Jez Butterworth had seen The Last Waltz with Rick Danko in 1976 talking about doing his first solo album and indeed he toured the next year. Joan is a fantasist, so it is probably meant to be wishful thinking. In fact the Rick Danko 1977 and 1978 tours had no female backing singers.
And in the end …
It switches back to the four young Webb Sisters singing Dream A Little Dream of Me, finishing with ‘Young Joan’ solo and unaccompanied. Magic.
Very mild issue? It took time to adjust to Lancashire accents, though I know them well. Ruby particularly lacked initial clarity. Just slow a little.
It has major themes (assisted dying, sexual abuse, abortion). It has superb songs, old as they are. It has a first rate dance number (in contrast to the musical we saw the night before, which had no dance). It is very funny indeed. Then the sheer drama of the end of Act Two is edge of the seat thrilling. The end has pathos. What is there not to like?
It didn’t get the instant standing ovation I expected. It deserved it. However, you can easily milk that on curtain calls and they didn’t. It would not have fitted the mood they created.
From both of us, an unequivocal five star rating.
*****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
There is an issue here. That is mentioning in the reviews that Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem is commonly held to be the best play of the 21st Century (though the Ferryman competes) then pointing out that The Hills of California might be a sliver less stunning, so knocking off a star. Fortunately I found a copy of the London Gazette & Crier from 1610:
A Winter’s Tale: Reviewed By Dominic Drury, gent.
To the Blackfriars Theatre to witness Mr. Shakespeare’s newest theatrical conceit, A Winter’s Tale by candle light in their December hall, hence the title . Your humble servant did find the balance of comedy and tragedy complicated his emotions somewhat, and the Bear is gratuitous fare for the more common of the groundlings, thus more aligned to the rough and ready and vulgar Southwark audiences than to the distinguished gentlemen seated at the Blackfriars. The ladies took fright at the Bear’s roar. Mr. Shakespeare had warned of this possibility with The Lion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Suffice to say, that while powerful, it is not quite at the esteemed rank of Mr. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, thus four stars merely.
5 star
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times *****
Sam Marlowe, The Stage *****
4 star
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ****
Susannah Clapp, The Observer ****
Andrez Lukowski, Time Out, ****
Fiona Mountford, iNews ****
Sarah Crompton,. The Stage ****
Nick Curtis, Evening Standard, ****
Oliva Garrett, Radio Times ****
3 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian, ***
Dominic Maxwell, The Sunday Times ***
Clive Davis, The Times, ***
Alice Saville, The Independent ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
JEZ BUTTERWORTH
Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, Apollo Theatre, 2011 (Mark Rylance)
Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, the Watermill, Newbury 2018 (Jasper Britton)
Mojo by Jez Butterworth, West End
The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court 2017
SAM MENDES
The Motive & The Cue, National Theatre 2023
The Ferryman, by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court, London 2017
King Lear, National Theatre, 2014, with Simon Russell-Beale
Richard III, Old Vic 2011, with Kevin Spacey
1917 (film)
LAURA DONNELLY
The Ferryman, by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court, London 2017
HELENA WILSON
Jack Absolute Flies Again, National Theatre 2022
The Deep Blue Sea, Chichester2019
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Old Vic 2017
BRYAN DICK
Twelfth Night, Globe 2021, BBC 2022
Hogarth’s Progress, Rose Kingston 2018
The Two Noble Kinsmen, Globe 2018
Hobson’s Choice, Bath 2016
COREY JOHNSTON
A Streetcar Named Desire, Young Vic / NT Live 2014
SOPHIA ALLY
The Ferryman, by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court, London 2017
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