The Hills of California is the buzziest play of the year, the latest from Jez Butterworth, the writer behind the “play of the century.” More than just a good play, it pays homage to Blackpool, a city overlooked by southerners that despite its challenges has oodles of charm
“It’s all kiss me quick, mine’s a choc ice,” writes Jez Butterworth in The Hills of California, his new play about 1976’s Blackpool. But of course it isn’t: the Webb sisters have reunited to say goodbye to their dying mother, and amid the driest summer in 200 years, Blackpool – like the Webb family unit – is fraying.
Butterworth wrote the “play of the century” with his vivid, thoughtful picture of Britain in Jerusalem in 2009. In that piece, the writer presents a mythical image of Britishness through the character of Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, a disenfranchised Englishman whose existence living in a caravan in the woods speaks to a growing tide of anti-establishment thinking on our shores, about the decaying notion of Britain. The play has the kind of depth you only come across a couple of times in a lifetime.
The Hills of California can’t beat Jerusalem, and it’s arguably unfair but inevitable that the play will be likened to it, but it is another near-perfectly sketched portrait of demise.
In Butterworth’s Blackpool in The Hills of California, the Webb sisters have gathered in the Seaview hotel, but it doesn’t have a seaview, it just markets itself on a dream. Advertisements say the hotel is a two minute walk from the promenade, but later we discover it’s “four tram stops” away. Set designer Rob Howell has created a staggering hotel that is both cramped and unwieldy, where the stairs to the upper rooms seem to go on forever, stretching beyond the top of the stage.
In scenes set in the 1950s mother Veronica encourages her four child-age daughters to perform as a harmony singing group in homage to the popular trios of the time. They perform the popular hit, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, and hope to play in the thriving entertainment venues of Blackpool.
This was the city that in the first half of the Twentieth Century provided an international template for what entertainment could be. Blackpool inspired Walt Disney himself, who sent men there to research before opening his first theme park, and the town also had two piers, more than anywhere else. It boasted the first electric street lighting in the world, and the busiest train station on Earth. As the programme notes, in 1919 writer Thomas Luke called the UK’s entertainment capital “one of the wonders of the world.”
Blackpool as an entertainment hub was booming, but by 1976 with the advent of international travel, and changing tastes, the city was in decline, and those who paid its price were the residents.
Blackpool today is a multi-dimensional place
The picture of Blackpool in 2024 is more multi-dimensional than the play lets on, butButterworth’s core message is right that the people have been let down. I visited recently for a stag party, when two sets of locals tried to fight me and my friends for very little reason. One called the stag’s father a “nonce.” It felt like they had anger they wanted to expel. Blackpool ranks as one of the most deprived cities in the UK. “Many people were already in poverty, and the cost of living pressures are having the biggest impact on this group, who need to spend a greater proportion of their incomes on household essentials,” doctor Arif Rajpura, Director of Public Health, Blackpool council, told the government website last year.
Still an entertainment capital of the UK
But there was another story: in the bright sunshine, we were getting burned, which was not the Blackpool we imagined, and in the beaming light, the vintage trams that run the implausibly long length of the promenade’s three piers (seven miles) gleamed like plastic sets moving through a toy town, too pretty to be real. At the top of the south pier, my best mate the stag danced around to the live musicians dressed in an inflatable pig outfit; about one hundred locals sat in the pretty bar at the top of the wooden pier clapped along in laughter.
Miles of sandy beach stretch to the north and south. It’s a unique proposition to walk for 45 minutes past an impossible amount of live singers, magicians, old-fashioned confectionery shops and beachfront bars but accept you can’t see the whole of the Blackpool seafront in one weekend. It is too labyrinthine, too exciting, just too much, to take in in one visit. Keeping in the spirit of the town, we drove up from London with the family run Johnson’s Coaches, who have been providing coach travel since 1909, including to Blackpool during the glory days.
All along the promenade, bars were heaving, and at two in the afternoon, the dance floors were packed. Wetherspoons pubs are controversial subjects but Blackpool has a ferociously good one, with a rooftop balcony the size of four squash courts overlooking the middle pier. Promotional posters for Elvis and Lady Gaga impersonators hung from the piers in high resolution that must have been ten, fifteen metres wide, and made of proper material: the type of posters you don’t print unless there’s an audience looking for them in the first place.
In 2004 Strictly Come Dancing helped reignite the flame of Blackpool, Britain’s entertainment capital, by filming the finale of the live shows at the Tower Ballroom within the Blackpool Tower, the beautiful historical hall first opened in 1894.
Going to the top of the Tower is like ascending the Eiffel Tower; you go up through a complex and impressive web of steel and cast iron and from the top on a clear day you can see North Wales, the Lake District and the Isle of Man.
I’d wanted to see more of Blackpool, though, so I went back down, bought some candy floss, and continued cavorting along the timeless, thrilling promenade, where I would happily return again and again.
The Hills of California runs until 15 June 2024 at the Harold Pinter Theatre; go to Visit Blackpool to find out more about visiting.
Read more: We ate in a Michelin star restaurant the night it won – the vibe was electric
Read more: Occupied City: Steve McQueen’s amazing 4.5 hour documentary