Carey Mulligan, Bill Nighy and director Stephen Daldry ensure that David Hare’s play, which is one of his very best, gets a first-rate revival. Skylight is another of Hare’s critiques of British society; but, with only three actors, it is at a much more intimate level than his recent epic productions at the National Theatre.
Kyra lived with Tom and things were fine until Tom’s wife discovered that they were having an affair. Kyra left him immediately. Three years later Tom, a highly successful restaurateur, turns up at her freezing council flat in North London. His wife has died of cancer and he wants to renew the relationship. He is appalled to find that she is now a dedicated and compassionate maths teacher in a tough comprehensive school and cannot understand why she should be sacrificing her life in this way when he is willing to provide for her. “Why are you fighting so hard to get into what everybody else is fighting to get out of?” he asks. But then he has this habit of writing people off, especially social workers and teachers whose job it is to clear up “society’s rubbish”.
The mixture of love and politics works well. The second act becomes a debate between the public and private sector, an argument between entrepreneurial materialism and self-denying idealism. The debate is as relevant today as it was when Bill Nighy first assayed the role in 1997 which he took over from Michael Gambon who had created it. Nighy has Tom’s arrogance, self-absorption and raffishness; restless, he prowls the stage continuously, a chauvinist bully. Carey Mulligan, calm and self-contained, underplays and stands up to him and keeps the audience remains firmly on Kyra’s side.