On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis (Carey Mulligan) receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant (Bill Nighy), 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.
David Hare's Skylight originally premiered at the National Theatre in London in 1995 before going on to play smash hit engagements in the West End and on Broadway the following year. When the 2014 production of Skylight opened in the West End in June it was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic.
And yet here they are in David Hare's Skylight, a monkey and a moonbeam, somehow bringing the same story to thrilling life. Nighy, as will be obvious to anyone who saw him in Love Actually or as Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, is the monkey, or perhaps better to call him a Catherine wheel of tics and poses and stutters and quirks. 'Mannered' is not a strong enough word to describe the way he creates the illusion of character from a million incessant, if apparently spontaneous, affectations. (At several points, he struts across the stage sideways, his long legs pointing into the wings while his face stares down the audience.) Meanwhile, as she did in An Education and in the 2008 Broadway production The Seagull, Mulligan creates the illusion of character with no affectations at all. In fact, she hardly seems to be doing anything - and then suddenly tears will fling themselves from her eyes, or a smile will rise from some depth to the surface and recede again. She is as rivetingly, radically transparent as he is hilariously baroque, but in the end that's only fitting; the play, one of Hare's best, is about the gap between what's reconcilable and what's not.
Mulligan, in a crackling revival of David Hare's 'Skylight' that opened Thursday at the Golden Theater, starts and completes a spaghetti Bolognese during the first act, chopping onions and garlic and boiling water along the way. The whiff of sausage lingers deliciously during intermission. It's a fitting theatrical device because this show, quite simply, cooks. Mulligan, a spectacular Bill Nighy, the marvelous newcomer Matthew Beard and the director Stephen Daldry make alchemy onstage with their own red-hot talent. Funny, poignant and insightful, the West End transfer 'Skylight' is a full meal in a place where appetizers often pass as entrees.
Videos