The play, about a group of English sisters who reunite at their mother’s deathbed, plans to open in New York in September. It ends a London run this month.
“The Hills of California,” the latest darkly comedic drama from the acclaimed English playwright Jez Butterworth, will transfer to Broadway this fall after a well-received five-month run in London.
The play, directed by Sam Mendes, is about a group of singing sisters — well, they sang together as kids — who have gathered at their childhood home in northwestern England because their mother is dying of cancer. The play is set in the 1970s, with flashbacks to the 1950s.
The British press gave generally high marks to the play, which garnered five-star reviews in The Financial Times and The Stage, and four-star reviews in The Telegraph, The Evening Standard, The Observer and TimeOut.
The London production is scheduled to end its run June 15. The New York production is to begin previews Sept. 11 and to open Sept. 29 at the Broadhurst Theater. Casting has not yet been announced.
Butterworth’s last Broadway venture, “The Ferryman,” was also directed by Mendes, and won the Tony Award for best play in 2019. His first play on Broadway, “Jerusalem” in 2011, is a favorite among theater critics. He also wrote “The River,” which opened on Broadway in 2014.
Mendes has worked frequently on Broadway, and won Tony Awards for directing “The Ferryman” and “The Lehman Trilogy.” He is also a film director, and won an Oscar for directing “American Beauty.”
The lead producers of the Broadway run of “The Hills of California” include Sonia Friedman, a prolific and enormously successful British producer who also led the producing teams for Butterworth’s three previous plays on Broadway. The play’s other lead producers will be No Guarantees, which is led by Christine Schwarzman; Neal Street Productions, which is Mendes’s production company; Brian Spector; and Sand & Snow Entertainment.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
