"a strong play - gripping, paced, and nuanced"

July 11, 2004 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Over the years the Miniature Theatre of Chester has built a reputation for presenting effective productions of small cast plays that grapple with ideas, often in minimal impressionistic settings that can pantomime the tea pot.

The current production of David Hare’s Skylight, under James Warwick’s insightful and competent direction, is set in a realistic setting, scrupulously detailed down to can-openers that work and paint-stuck windows that must be dragged up. The setting is an apartment in an East London slum, shabby and cold (no central heating but a space heater helps and if it’s really cold you can keep your coat on). No TV, but there's a bookcase full of books.

And in this production, the action that occurs on the stage is as realistic, the characters as naturally themselves and as believable, that the story they tell is one that sweeps the audience into its intensity. There is no melodrama. This is reality. The chopping block is for chopping unions and the knife used will not become a weapon. The weapons will be the words as the two chief characters argue out their differences.

The plot concerns two former lovers meeting after a three-year absence. Tom (Terence Rigby) is an over-assertive, middle-aged, rich owner of several up-scale London restaurants. He is loud, insensitive, totally out of touch with the feelings of others. His insensitivity is summed up in his comment about his recently dead wife’s love of nature: "Gardening. If I could make it illegal, I would!" Most of the laugh lines are his, mainly because they reveal so much about him that is crass and unfeeling.

Kyra, (Francesca Faridany) in whose flat the actions occur, is a much more sympathetic character. We learn that as a young girl of l8 she had been employed in one of Tom’s restaurants, then taken into his family, and eventually into his bed. When his wife discovered the situation, Kyra fled, breaking off the laison, one in which she, evidently naively, had given her love.

During the three years they have been separated, Tom’s wife has died of cancer. In his money-can-buy-anything mentality, he has built a skylit room where the dying woman can lie and look at the nature she loves. He seems to feel this should make up for the guilt he almost feels. Now, a year after his wife’s death, he wants Kyra back and comes lumbering up her tenement stairs, leaving his chauffeur sitting in the car outside for hours. "He can wait. It’s what he’s paid for."

The play deals with the hours of this one night these two spend together. Kyra has grown, her values have changed. She may not be totally happy in her job of teaching inner-city children, but it gives her life a meaning. Even the physical attraction this older man once had for her is no longer enough. Tom will always be the boor he evidently was years ago when she did not see him so clearly.

The cards are stacked for Krya in Hare’s play, but they are fascinatingly dealt out.

This is a strong play - gripping, paced, and nuanced and it is being given a strong performance. The characters are dynamic and believable. A third character in a minor role at the play’s opening and closing, Tom’s son, played by Nicholas Lawson, is not only appealing but a part of the coda that brings this play to a satisfactory ending.

The July 11 matinee was crowded and enthusiastic. Chester is a pleasant distance, just a bit beyond Becket and Jacob's Pillow. Discover it if you have not yet.