On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant, a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. As the evening progresses, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.
I am always amazed that theatres are full. Not because theatre is rubbish... but because it has become murderously expensive. I mean, seriously, who has £100 quid to spend on three hours' entertainment?? Thanks, though, to a very generous donor of theatre tokens to the Claire's Cultural Education fund (and some discounted front row tickets), I got to treat myself to Skylight, a play by David Hare at Wyndham's theatre.
I'm a big fan of David Hare - be it his numerous West End triumphs or his Academy Award nominated screenplays for The Hours and The Reader. Hare alone, therefore, was enough to get me to sacrifice my trusty theatre tokens but when I saw Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy were going to be in it... well, perhaps disappointingly, I just can't resist a bit of Hollywood.
As it turns out, Nighy is actually reprising the role of Tom that he played back in 1996, in the very same theatre on Charing Cross Road. While I'm perfectly aware that people do get into relationships with a huge age gap, I do find Hollywood's almost insistence of pairing up ageing male actors with beautiful young women gets a bit tiring and is all about the aesthetic and cultural politics and very little about the credible, heart-rending love the writer, I assume, first wrote about. Needless to say, this was not a problem for Nighy who captivated the audience from the moment he stepped on stage. He delivered the character's charisma and intelligence beautifully and with such energy, you couldn't keep your eyes off him (and he off his audience... it seems Mr. Nighy likes a bit of audience eye contact... while I desperately tried not to shrivel up into a giggly goo ball) and there was no doubt as to why Mulligan's character, Kyra, had fallen for him.
As for Carey Mulligan, her skin really is that good. Turns out she can also multi-task - she admirably acts and cooks in this production. More importantly, she's just the most exquisite actress. Arguably the most touching scene of the whole play is shared between Mulligan and her An Education co-star Matthew Beard, who play's Tom's son. Beard has clearly been studying his on-screen father's acting style, amazing presence, twitchily charming and bursting with humour.
The play itself is right up my street. Ostensibly Hare showcases the often unhelpful polarisation of society but this is not a political rant, at least I didn't see it that way. Thanks to Hare's hilarious and accurate cultural observations, the play is laugh-out-loud funny (couldn't quite bring myself to type LOL...) while simultaneously building deeper, complex characters. Personally I always love a play or novel that explores a bit of old internal conflict and the lies we all tell ourselves, and Skylight certainly doesn't disappoint as you wait for it all to bubble up through the humour to the surface.
Probably one of the best plays I've ever seen. For me, it felt so real and that's rare for me when it comes to theatre - arguably helped by the neck-breakingly close seats but, if you can snatch a last minute ticket, go. Simples.
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