SKYLIGHT is an argument. It’s the aftermath of what lies beyond.
Kyra (Anna Samson) faces her past as it barges through her dingy council flat door.
She is the ghost of an affair that destabilized Tom (Colin Friels) and his late wife Alice, who were once Kyra’s employers and in a way, family.
It is difficult to say whether the contemporary classic is a love story or a battle of juxtapositions. Tom is Kyra’s direct antithesis –a representation of business and age where-as she is the cold youth and the public. His son, Edward, (Toby Wallace) who both opens and closes the performance, can be seen as potential. He can follow the path of his wealthy father, or estrange himself from privilege, and like Kyra, face the reality of the world.
Twenty year after it’s premiere, David Hare’s SKYLIGHT returns to the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC). Directed by Helpmann Award-winner Dean Bryant, the play seeks to discuss the complexity of love, values and the moral code.
The romance between Kyra and Tom is sometimes unconvincing, however this could be attributed to years of distrust and hiding. Realism is flooded into the set, most obviously through the smell of onions and pasta cooked by Kyra in the first act, and through the impressive set.
Dale Ferguson has created a detailed set design, placing Kyra’s flat underneath the shells of five similar abodes. There is reference to religion and graffiti, as a strong suggestion to the low socio-economic and migrant status of the North London demographic. The repetitive design also alludes to Kyra’s place as one of many in the public machine.
It is integral to consider the pace of the play in order to understand how Hare intends his characters to be perceived. Initially, it may seem that Tom’s self righteous monologue causes the first act to prolong. But, it is important to remember the deliberate nature of theatre. It’s intention is to communicate and provoke, not always to amuse. The audience is meant to feel the awkward boredom of his dominating speech. It is evocative of an interaction we all have had in the past, one in which someone you have unfinished business with, puts on a façade in an attempt to prove that they’re fine, that they haven’t let go of themselves. Overall it’s fake, but intentionally so.
A shift of pace ensues in the second act, as the dialogue becomes brutally honest – with one rebuttal from Anna Samson worthy of applause.
Hare’s play is ultimately the conversation most adulterers’ will never have, it revels in it’s honestly and tackles human morality at its most extreme points. This exploration is timeless, it spoke to audiences twenty years ago and will speak to audiences in twenty years to come.
The MTC’s production of David Hare’s SKYLIGHT is playing the Southbank theatre, Melbourne until July 23.