Skylight – Wyndam’s Theatre, London

It seemed odd to me at the outset to revive a play about former lovers, with Bill Nighy in the same role he played in the initial West End transfer 18 years ago, and Carey Mulligan playing opposite him, but I was utterly convinced by the end of the evening.  The star power of the leads had certainly drawn many audience members there – there was audible delight from some at the way Matthew Beard’s Edward echoed the recognisable mannerisms of Bill Nighy before the man himself appeared on stage – but once there, the combination of powerful performances and political relevance was very compelling, and resulted in an engaged and responsive audience.

Skylight shows the reunion of Tom, a successful restaurateur, and Kyra, a teacher in a difficult East End school; former colleagues and lovers until his wife discovered the affair and Kyra left.  The play is bookended by visits to Kyra’s flat by Tom’s son Edward, who both challenges her seeming abandonment of his family and makes touching, if gauche, gestures of friendship.  The real meat of the play, however, is in the meeting between Tom and Kyra in the same Kensal Rise flat, and the conflict between mutual attraction and competing ideologies.  As the playwright David Hare writes, Skylight was written after 15 years of governments “…determined to denigrate and demoralise anyone who held faith with the values of public service,” and Tom and Kyra’s clash of left and right, of capitalist individualism and socially engaged public sector values, is immediately recognisable to today’s audiences, and makes this a timely revival.

London’s socio-economic landscape is almost a shorthand in the play for the viewpoints and decisions of the central characters: faced with a difficult period in his life, Tom has retreated to the isolated comfort of Wimbledon, while Kyra’s refusal to choose the easy path is reflected in her decision to commute from a cold council estate in one difficult London neighbourhood to a challenging public school in another.  Bob Crowley’s brilliant set design adds further context, with Kyra’s council estate filling the whole world of the stage.

Overall, though, it was the performances that made it for me.  Bill Nighy was recognisably himself: able to get the humour from almost any line, restlessly moving around the space of the flat, but also able to bring out his character’s vulnerability and bring depth to key moments in the play.  Carey Mulligan’s performance, by contrast, was effectively subtle, even as her character defended her views and choices with passion.  The first half brought out these differences, while in the powerful second half I began to see them as a couple – the way that their differences had brought them together as well as driven them apart – and the poignancy of lost love as a counterpoint to what is a relatively political play shows the strength of the writing as well as the acting.  Skylight is on until late August, and I would thoroughly recommend going to see it for those of you in London before then.