He has established a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected modern playwrights, but Jez Butterworth’s film career has clearly inspired the subjects he now wishes to undertake.
The playwright was 29 when he worked with disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein on the 2001 erotic thriller Birthday Girl, and it’s clear the experience continues to haunt him.
Butterworth’s new, highly anticipated play, The Hills of California – her first in seven years – is a multi-layered, post-#MeToo story about grief, trauma, and the hardships women have to endure to achieve their dreams.
Set in a Blackpool boarding house during the summer heatwave of 1976, the film tells the story of the Webb sisters, who are reunited at the deathbed of their mother Veronica. As the women await the arrival of their fourth sister, Joan, who was separated after leaving for California 20 years ago, they begin to piece together the landmark events of their young lives.
The show then jumps to 1955, and we learn how their widowed mother obsessively trained them to be a singing group similar to the Andrews brothers, in hopes of fame and success. And how an inevitable encounter with a predatory American agent extinguishes Joan’s inner spark and – directly and accidentally – destroys all their lives thereafter.
Such events are what Butterworth calls “bleak but commonplace.”
“My first experiences in the film business were with Miramax, and particularly with Harvey Weinstein,” he told BBC Front Row this week. “It became clear very quickly that these were the rules of the game. “I was meeting actresses in California who wanted to do my movie but wouldn’t talk to me because they ran into her.”
During a street fight, Butterworth punched Weinstein after the then-powerful movie mogul hit another colleague. Years later, as the accusations against Weinstein mounted, Butterworth read an open letter on the BBC’s Newsnight programme, prompting him to “think of the little 11-year-old girls whose unique talents you have benefited from for decades, whose dreams you have determinedly and forever defined”.
The promise of lost dreams touches every scene of The Hills of California.
The play, which runs at the Harold Pinter theater until June, reunites the team behind Butterworth’s 2017 hit The Ferryman; that team includes Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes, set designer Rob Howell, and actor Laura Donnelly (Butterworth’s partner), who plays both Veronica and Veronica. Joan.
This is a major shift from the author’s previous dramas, which were praised for their explorations of masculinity and national identity. The California Hills are dominated by women; men play either predatory or unfortunate secondary characters (in the case of the sisters’ husbands). “When I wrote this play, I realized that whenever a man walks in, he is sent to perform a task of one kind or another… I was amused by the fact that the women in this story were constantly pushing them to the margins of society. Butterworth told the BBC:
This departure seems partly to be the result of changes in the author’s own life. He said having four daughters, two with Donnelly and two with ex-wife Gilly Richardson, contributed to a new perspective. “Someone is delivering something to the house, I will make them talk because days can go by without me talking to a man. This goes on for years and then all of a sudden this voice starts writing my stuff,” he told the Times recently.
Butterworth’s performances were critically acclaimed. He made his breakthrough with the play Mojo, which premiered at the Royal Court in 1995. Black comedy Soho, set in 1950s gangland, has drawn comparisons to Quentin Tarantino and received numerous awards, including the Olivier for best new comedy and the Evening Standard Award for most promising comedy. play writer.
This was followed by The Night Heron, The Winter Child and Parlor Song. However, she did not become a household name until Jerusalem in 2009.
In Jerusalem, considered the best play of the 21st century, Mark Rylance played eccentric drug dealer Johnny “Rooster” Byron, who is evicted from his caravan in the Wiltshire forest. Praised for capturing a sense of Britishness, the play was a huge success; It moved from the Royal Court to the West End (where people queue for tickets from 3am) and then to Broadway before touring in the UK and internationally.
Butterworth had another huge success with The Ferryman, which became the fastest-selling play in the history of the Royal Court. Inspired by Donnelly’s family, the film tells the story of a Northern Irish family during the Troubles and an uncle who “disappears” after falling into the IRA.
Today, Butterworth has two Olivier awards and a Tony award to his name. But her love of writing and acting was nurtured decades ago during her undergraduate years at Cambridge University (where her contemporaries included actor Rachel Weisz and journalist James Harding).
Born in London and raised in St Albans, Hertfordshire, the author was one of five siblings. His mother was a dental nurse, and his father was a lorry driver who won a scholarship to Oxford in middle age and became a lecturer in trade union law.
Meanwhile, his sister Joanna, who worked as a registrar at Lamda drama school, died of brain cancer in 2012, aged 46. He moved into Butterworth’s cottage in his final months, so he witnessed first-hand what a man faces. death. “What happened in 24 hours in this game happened in six months,” he said.
Hosting the game in Blackpool was a tribute to his father, who hailed from Rochdale. But overall the author sees his settings as “away games”; distant, unfamiliar places and times that gave him space to write about topics closer to home. She and Donnelly (called theatre’s “coolest power couple” by Vogue) split their time between north London and Devon.
The Hills of California, which also stars Ophelia Lovibond, Leanne Best, Helena Wilson, Bryan Dick and Shaun Dooley, is Butterworth’s eighth play in almost 30 years. He believes that screenwriting gives him the freedom to take risks in his plays; Her scripted films and shows include the James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and the marriage drama Mammals on Prime Video. He frequently collaborates with his brothers John-Henry and Tom, who are also screenwriters, while his third brother, Steve, is a producer.
Reviews for The Hills of California range from three stars in the Guardian to four and five stars elsewhere. But the excitement in the bars and stands of the theater named after Harold Pinter, Butterworth’s friend and inspiration, showed that he remains one of the most talked about figures in contemporary theatre.