By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Saturday 3 February, runs through 15 June 2024 RUNTIME: 180 minutes (including a 15-minute interval and a brief pause)

It’s the long hot summer of 1976 and 3 sisters reunite in the front room of their mother’s Blackpool guesthouse as she lays dying upstairs.

• Read on for reasons including why despite the inevitable air of melancholy this is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny

A 4th sister – Joan – is travelling back from the titular California to join them but her flight has been delayed.

This is Jez Butterworth’s (Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre) 1st new play since 2017’s The Ferryman, which won our Best New Play monsta, and he’s reunited with his Olivier-winning star Laura Donnelly, his real-life wife, and director Sam Mendes (The Motive And The Cue, National and now Noel Coward Theatre).

There’s a revolve midway through Act 1 where we go back in time 20 or so years to the guest house’s kitchen where we discover the 4 daughters are a singing group with dreams of becoming the new Andrews Sisters.

The first thing to say is that despite the inevitable air of melancholy this is occasionally laugh-out-loud funny particularly when we get to know the older sisters with words like ‘bog breath’, ‘shithole’ and ‘Hey Presto-n’ littered in the script.

All 3 sisters are strong and believable but it was Leanne Best’s Gloria who made us laugh loudest and stole the show.

Events take a darker turn when the sisters ponder why 15-year-old Joan never returned home after auditioning solo with an American talent scout singing a cover of Nat King Cole’s When I Fall In Love in an upstairs room at the guest house with her mother’s reluctant blessing.

So we’re in Gypsy territory but darker with Donnelly’s mother Veronica desperate for fame for her brood and suddenly the ideas of an unplayed piano going to ruin and a life lived ‘in song’ coalesce and we start to realise where this story is headed.

It’s unfortunate then that this interesting story rather spins out of control in its final act.

Does it justify its near 3-hour runtime? Almost – but it’s no Ferryman or Jerusalem.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy ATG
• Have you seen Jez Butterworth play before and what did you think of this 1? Tickets
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