Veronica is dying, so her still single adult daughter Jill, who never left her childhood home and has dutifully served as her mother’s caretaker, sends word to her sisters Ruby, Gloria, and Joan to come see her before her imminent passing, as she promised she would do. What follows is a three-act, nearly three-hour-long melodrama with injections of dark sardonic humor, that moves back and forth in time, from 1976 to 1955, revolving around a domineering mother driven by blind ambition to launch, at any cost, her four young daughters, The Webb Sisters, on a song-and-dance career modeled after The Andrew Sisters (whose popularity was then fading). And the cost is high, causing irreparable damage to her girls, total familial dysfunction and estrangement, and failure in achieving the success and fame she sought for them, in The Hills of California, the latest epic by Tony and Olivier Award winner Jez Butterworth (The Ferryman), directed by Tony, Olivier, and Oscar winner Sam Mendes (The Ferryman; The Lehman Trilogy). Lara McDonnell, Laura Donnelly, and Sophia Ally. Photo by Joan Marcus. Set at the now rundown Seaview boarding house in Blackpool, England, run by Veronica, the story evokes the figures and themes from Gypsy and Mommie Dearest, with the central characters contrived as dated sexist stereotypes of women and (spoiler alert) one of the underage sisters shown not as a victim but as the willing participant in her sexual abuse by a much, much older American male producer – an egregious case of misogynist victim blaming, as the young girl leads him upstairs to a bedroom and her mother knowingly sits by (in the American premiere of the new play, in the works since 2012, well after the #Me Too movement began, and according to the playwright, inspired by the funeral of the mother of his friend, who was one of three brothers – not sisters). While the show does feature multiple lead roles for women, they are anything but flattering depictions of authoritarian control, in-fighting, and psychological and emotional trauma caused by one another, each with her own defining memories of the past. David Wilson Barnes, Lara McDonnell, and Laura Donnelly. Photo by Joan Marcus. The sisters are portrayed at two different ages by eight different cast members: in their thirties in 1977, with Helena Wilson as the steadfast and chaste Jill, Ophelia Lovibond as the anxiety-ridden Ruby, Leanne Best as the explosively resentful Gloria, and Laura Donnelly as the wild child Joan, who introduced her younger siblings to cigarettes, caused the break-up of their act when she left home for California and the American Dream (the play’s title is taken from the 1948 Johnny Mercer song) after her encounter with the unscrupulous producer (David Wilson Barnes as Luther St. John), adopted an American accent and rock-and-roll persona, and didn’t return for twenty years; and as the twelve- to fifteen-year-olds, well-played by Nicola Turner as Jill, Sophia Ally as Ruby, Nancy Allsop as Gloria, and Lara McDonnell as Joan, in their flashbacks to 1955. The chameleonic Donnelly also stars as Veronica in her late thirties (whose unmitigated determination to succeed was passed on to Joan), only appearing in her daughters’ mid-century recollections. All of them offer compelling embodiments of the characters as written, filled with the intense emotions they’ve been given, distinguishing their individual personalities, and revealing their backstories, resulting anguish, and deep-rooted reasons for their anger, panic attacks, alienation, competition, and inability to get along. Nancy Allsop, Nicola Turner, Sophia Ally, and Lara McDonnell. Photo by Joan Marcus. Although the women’s heavy English accents render much of the fast-paced dialogue difficult to understand, and the characters’ incessant lighting and puffing on cigarettes fills the orchestra section with tobacco smoke that is unavoidably inhaled by the audience, the segments of song by both the adolescent and adult siblings provide high-points in the show, displaying the talent their demanding mother – who had both an expressed favorite daughter and one she considered expendable – drilled into them, with spot-on four-part harmonies on such standards as “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” and “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (with Candida Caldicot serving as musical supervisor and arranger, and choreography by Ellen Kane). A large mostly male supporting cast includes the subsidiary roles of the compliant husbands of the imperious sisters (Bill and Dennis, played respectively by Richard Short and Bryan Dick), Gloria’s teenage son Tony (Liam Bixby), insulted repeatedly by his sister Patty (Allsop appearing in the minor role) and both brutally disciplined by their harsh mother, lodgers that Veronica orders around, threatens to evict, and forbids from entering the kitchen where she and her daughters gather (among them, Richard Short as Mr. Halliwell), with some of the boarders connected to The Webb Sisters’ show-biz aspirations (Richard Lumsden as Joe Fogg, who accompanies them on piano, and Dick seen again as Vaudevillian-style comic Jack Larken, who introduces them to St. John – and many of whose one-liners are also hard to hear). Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond, Helena Wilson, and Laura Donnelly. Photo by Joan Marcus. The show’s set design by Rob Howell captures the public and private areas of Seaview (which, it’s ironically noted, offers no views of the sea) on a revolving stage that rotates from the deteriorating Tiki Bar and broken jukebox of the guest parlor to the family’s kitchen, furnished with a piano, where the girls practice, with dramatic shifts in lighting by Natasha Chivers, as the scenes change from their stressful reunion in 1976, to their memories of 1955. Both rooms are backed by a towering multi-level grand staircase to the dark upper floors and unseen rooms, each named for a different American state (another symbol of their failed American Dream), with an often haunting soundscape by Nick Powell (and frequently unclear sound for the actors’ rapid-fire delivery and speech pattern). Period-style costumes by Howell are well-suited to the eras and personalities (the adult Joan’s is especially indicative of her journey), as are the wigs, hair, and make-up by Campbell Young Associates. Whether The Hills of California was intended to portray the pathos of unfortunate women striking out against a society that failed them, to parody the archetype of the relentlessly demanding stage mother, or, as seen from a feminist perspective, to perpetuate the stereotype of the overly emotional over-bearing female who can’t get along with anyone, not even her closest kin, it reaffirmed my happiness for having been an only child. Running Time: Approximately two hours and 45 minutes, including an intermission and a brief pause. The Hills of California plays through Sunday, December 22, 2024, at the Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street, NYC. For tickets (priced at $58-351, including fees), go online.