Shameful confession: It took Laura Donnelly’s coolly stunning entrance in The Hills of California to finally acquaint me with the lyrics to “Gimme Shelter.” I dig the Rolling Stones ghostly stomper as much as anyone, but only hazily grasped its words. The 1969 track blasts from a mysteriously reanimated jukebox as Donnelly’s Joan appears in glam-rock regalia: fur-trimmed coat, gold vest, flared blue jeans. She stalks grimly through her drab, memory-haunted childhood home after a 20-year absence. As Rob Howell’s massive set revolves around Joan, Mick Jagger brays about deadly storms and fires. In her solo, backing vocalist Merry Clayton wails, voice cracking: “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away, just a shot away.” What does mayhem and violation have to do with a prodigal daughter’s return? By this point in the play, we have a hint.

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You can never go home again? Jez Butterworth knows you never get out. The daring playwright tends to cluster his tribes in secluded, rural enclaves of birth or choice. In Jerusalem, a dissolute cult of runaways formed around Johnny “Rooster” Byron (the unforgettable Mark Rylance) in a remote forest clearing. A crowded Irish farmhouse in County Armagh was the bustling center of The Ferryman. More sparsely, a decade ago, Hugh Jackman........

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