Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013).
For directing the play The Ferryman, Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.
‘The Hills Of California’ Broadway Review: Jez Butterworth’s Homecoming Tale Of Harmony Long Gone
deadline.comIs there a more dependable set-up for family drama than the gathering of long-estranged siblings? Last season’s dark and wonderful Appropriate proved there was plenty of life in Pinter’s old Homecoming trick, and this Broadway season Jez Butterworth does it again with the fine The Hills Of California, a superbly performed reckoning with old traumas and those family squabbles that can seem so petty on the surface.
Of course, longstanding squabbles usually turn out to be not so petty after all, at least once they’ve been eviscerated for all to see.
And Butterworth, along with his uncannily simpatico director Sam Mendes, does expert work on the evisceration front, doling out tidbits of decades-old family resentments until just the right moments for the cutting open.
We might guess what drove the once-close four sisters of The Hills Of California apart for so many years, and maybe even why some, not all, have shut their now-dying mom out of their lives for so long.
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