by Jez Butterworth

Tender, compelling, and savagely funny, The Hills of California by Olivier and Tony Award–winning playwright Jez Butterworth (The Ferryman, Jerusalem) explores the lasting impact of ambition, memory, and unrealized dreams.

In the summer of 1976—the driest in two hundred years—four adult sisters return to a worn seaside guest house on the outskirts of Blackpool, England, as their mother lies dying upstairs. While the nearby beaches bustle, old tensions resurface and the play shifts between the present and 1955, when their fiercely ambitious mother trained them to become a close-harmony singing act in the mould of the Andrews Sisters. What once promised success and escape reveals unexpected and devastating consequences.

By turns sharp, heartbreaking, and darkly humorous, The Hills of California is a moving meditation on sisterhood, the cost of perfection, and the unbreakable bonds of family.

First produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and Neal Street Productions, the play premiered at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End in January 2024.

Produced through special arrangements with Nick Hern Books.