Skylight
Director: Stephen Daldry
Writer: David Hare
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bill Nighy, Matthew Beard

Plot:
Kyra (Carey Mulligan) works as a teacher and lives in a small, pretty crappy apartment – but she likes it. She is surprisingly visited by Edward (Matthew Beard) whose nanny she used to be. Edward feels lonely and abandoned by Kyra, especially since his mother died, but mostly he struggles with his father Tom (Bill Nighy) and hopes for help from Kyra which she can’t really give. After Edward leaves, Tom shows up himself, wanting answers, reconciliation, a fresh start. After all, Kyra left the family when Tom’s wife discovered that Tom and Kyra had an affair. But a lot of time has passed and it is unclear whether such a fresh start is possible – or even desirable.

Skylight is an excellent play and the production we saw is fantastic. It was absolutely captivating.

Skylight is a prime example how little you actually need to tell a great story. There are only three characters, one of which is barely on stage. There is only one apartment this takes part in. The story isn’t overly flashy or dramatic. It’s just a slice of life.

The set-up, the dialogues and in particular the way the characters move on stage underscores that feeling of an everyday occurrence. Kyra comes home from the shop. She puts her groceries away. She cooks (boy, was I glad that I only saw it on the screen and not live in the theater because I already was hungry and I could practically smell the spaghetti sauce anyway, without being present). Tom walks through her apartment, more or less covertly inspecting everything. It didn’t feel like we were watching a play at all just from that realistic way the characters behaved.

It is also due to the dialogues that the play feels so realistic. The way Hare structured them makes it feel like you’re listening to your neighbors fight, not like you’re watching a play. [He is also a master of implication – you get the entire story and very little has to be spelled out.] Of course, you also need actors to pull that off – you need them to stay away from theater acting while acting in a theater (for which, let’s not forget, theater acting was made and where it serves a very disinct purpose). Fortunately the cast delivers fully. Not a single beat is missed by them.

All that makes the play and its characters feel extremely accessible and you really feel like you get to know them, with all of their strengths and weaknesses, as people and not as figures in somebody’s imagination. That is ultimately what makes the play so interesting.

Summarizing: Wonderful.