Summary
Set in a seaside guesthouse in England, four sisters reunite as their mother lies dying. The play shifts between 1976 and 1955, revealing the family’s fractured past and their mother’s ruthless ambition to make them stars.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 7:30 PM Nov 19, 2024, 7:30 PM
This is outrageously sophisticated visual storytelling for a stage show. The Seaview Guesthouse set is huge and elaborate and rotates back and forth to establish a three-dimensional sense of place. Each time it does, we’re brought across a time skip with two sets of actors, learning about the unraveling of a family in 1955 and their disparate recollections and reactions by 1976.
The dual timeline could land as a little gimmicky for some folks—one comparable I thought of was Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” which probably didn’t need to be nonlinear—but in the case of “Hills,” I think it really serves a story about coping with trauma and grief. As their mother lays dying, these sisters are forced to come together and dust off old memories, which are progressively revealed to the audience in turn. Older and younger actors are eventually (judiciously) deployed together for “inner child”-type reflections. Some of these beats might not surprise you, but it’s still awfully poignant, for example, to find out what happened to Joan, then find out what she’s like now (what an entrance!), then give her space to process things, all in an expressive, show-rather-than-tell manner.
Laura Donnelly kicks butt in a dual role as mother & daughter on either side of the time skip, giving us two women whose relationship has been violently torn apart, who could not be more different temperamentally, but who nevertheless share a few threads of mutual understanding. She’s the anchor here but the show really wouldn’t work without the rest of the strong ensemble, who are both convincing and easy-to-follow in the dual timeline.
Thursday, December 12, 2024 at 7:00 PM Dec 12, 2024, 7:00 PM
I’m kind of newly discovering Broadway/theatre as an interest and I’ve been on a month-long binge trying to catch up on everything that’s about to close. Don’t look at the credit card statement.
It was a delight seeing this with very naive eyes and then again with like 20 more shows under my belt. Loved it both times but it was practically like two different shows. I can’t wait to see how I cringe at my current opinions after another 20.
The first time I saw this I was really impressed with the sophistication of the rotating set and how effective the dual timeline is for telling a story about trauma and memory, and I still feel like it’s running well ahead of most of Broadway in those respects.
While some of that novelty wore off, it did surprise me how much of the dialogue I had missed and how funny it was. I also felt like it was really efficient at establishing so many distinct personalities across two time periods. Body language cues!
It really is a very good show! I think it’s the best play on right now by some distance.