Jez Butterworth and Sam Mendes on rewriting The Hills of California for Broadway – and comparisons to Gypsy

Jez Butterworth and Sam Mendes don’t really think about their characters off-stage. Butterworth says he doesn’t go home and wonder what Johnny “Rooster” Byron gets up to after the curtain comes down on Jerusalem; whatever happens to Quinn Carney after the bloody end of The Ferryman is irrelevant. However, when it comes to The Hills of California, Butterworth admits that he worries quite a lot about the fates of the women who come to life on stage at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway.

In this new drama, which premiered earlier this year at the Harold Pinter Theater in London’s West EndThe three of the Webb sisters are awaiting the return of their prodigal fourth as their mother Veronica lies on her deathbed upstairs. Will Joan — who ceased all communication with her family decades earlier — arrive in time? And what caused her to leave to begin with? Through flashbacks, we learn the full scope of the Webb family dynamic, and how the siblings — a former singing quartet — were put upon by their ambitious stage mom.

It’s a different kind of play for Butterworth; less enigmatic and more haunted. It’s no surprise that he and Mendes think about the Webb women as they vividly share their story. And you will, too.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jez, you’ve said that in your life now, you’re surrounded by women, with four daughters and Laura Donnelly, your partner. Do you feel that influence in The Hills of Californiawhich is a play about mothers and daughters and sisters, compared to your earlier works?
Jez Butterworth: The simple difference is that Mojomy first play 30 years ago, was six or seven men, and The Hills of California is eight women. My life has really changed from the first half, from going to an all-boys school and having one sister and three brothers. It was quite a male existence, and it’s completely the other way around now.

Sam Mendes: It’s a very female-oriented play. It makes me think about my daughter, my mother, my wife.

Jez: I wouldn’t say I have a female perspective, but it’s made a vast difference to how I think I see the world, and certainly to my plays. When we did The FerrymanI think three of those actresses were nominated for Olivier Awards, and I was absolutely thrilled, quite simply because I think it meant that I learned how to write decent parts for women, finally.

This is one of your only plays that didn’t open first at the Royal Court, instead opening cold in the West End. Is that kind of pressure different for you both as artists?
Jez: It feels like opening a play. I’m very Tiggerish about the whole thing. I find it exciting. I’m thrilled to be doing it. I can’t sleep. I don’t worry a great deal about what the strategy would be to do a play. I sort of did them at the Royal Court because they would do them.

I didn’t really want this one at the Royal Court because I didn’t really understand what the Royal Court had become. Taking it into the West End first was just about not wanting to do it at the Royal Court, and not much more beyond that. And if everyone else thinks that a good idea — Sam and (producer) Sonia Friedman know way more about whether that would be a good idea than I ever would. They’ve done hundreds of these, and I’ve done, like, half a dozen.

Sam: Jez is remarkably un-neurotic about the play once he wrote it. I don’t mean he’s cocky about it, but he doesn’t worry about the things he can’t control. He tends to say “I’ve written this play. “I’m going to trust you.” There’s a sense that you get released into discovering it yourself and then showing it to him. For Sonia, it’s probably the same. Jez is like, “Look, if you think we can survive in the West End, then let’s open it there.”

He’s honest that he’s very Tiggerish. His enthusiasm is infectious and he’s not someone who comes in with a sense of what the play should be in his head. He has a remarkable sort of clean objectivity, and he’s able to watch with a certain amount of distance, which is very unusual in my experience and remarkably helpful.

It’s the same process, fundamentally, in the West End as it is at the Royal Court. The only difference is there’s a moment, if you’re lucky enough to open at the Court and then go to the West End, of redrafting where you can make a few little changes, which we didn’t have in this production because it opened Straight in the West End. All the fine-tuning is happening now, so the show on Broadway is really the best version of itself.

What kind of editing or finessing did you do?
Jez: A couple of previews in (in the West End), it was clear that the first and second acts worked pretty much exactly as I would want them to, and that there was something in the craft of the last act that felt like the play moved away from the audience slightly. I can’t describe it as anything other than a kind of moment that troubled me. I always think that the last acts of my plays should be like bonfires, where all the characters are throwing their stuff onto it and watching it go up, and the heat and light that comes off is what you’re attending.

I felt that I had achieved that in Jerusalem and The Ferrymanand I felt that it was achievable in this play, but there was something in the character of Joan and her return that didn’t quite release the spirit that I was trying to release, which was one of defiance and survival, rather than victimhood . Sam will tell you; it took about 48 hours. It was clear what needed to be done. I really loved the play the way it was, so I was happy for it to have its version there, but I’m really thrilled with not only the results of the changes, but able to appreciate the difference.

There’s another odd thing, and I don’t know what this means, but I’ll offer it up anyway. I’ve never really seen my characters as people. Therefore, I’ve never really worried about their fate. I don’t go home and worry about Rooster Byron (from Jerusalem). For some reason in this play, I worry about them as if they’re real people. I worry about what is happening to Veronica and I worry about what’s happened to the kids. It sounds kind of nuts, but I found myself connecting to it in a completely different way.

Sam: I remember the first public performance of The Ferrymanlooking at 23 people on this tiny stage, children, babies, animals, and thinking “I know all these people, even the little seven-year-old girl. “How did he do that?” It’s not me or even the actors, really. You’re dealing with a series of completely imagined lives and you’re eavesdropping on what happens over 24 hours. But the sense of lives before and after are very, very powerful. I think that’s one of his greatest gifts. You don’t feel like you’re being told anything; You’re being asked to live in that room with these people.

It seemed to me that fate The Hills of California is playing right next to where Gypsy will be, given that the themes of the shows — domineering mothers and their daughters, stage parents with cutthroat ambition — are so similar. Do you see a line between them?
Jez: I don’t know it very well, to be honest with you.

Sam: Jez doesn’t come from Planet Theatre. There were a couple of moments in rehearsal where I thought of Mama Rose, but it’s a very different play. More than half the play is 20 years later, and Gypsy exists in the first-act period of Hills of Californiaas it were. I only thought “Wow, I can’t wait to see Audra play it, and I’m not happy to see the original choreography recreated.” In other words, a new production.

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