Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bill Nighy, Matthew Beard
Director: Stephen Daldry
Running time: 180 mins
Rating: E
Verdict: Masterly revival
Time has taken tragically little toll on David Hare's 1995 play. The pungent one-liners amuse, but the real sting is that references to inequality and the erosion of social conscience have become more pointed.
Yet Skylight is, as Hare remarks in an interval interview, a love story: "I wanted to get closer to people than I had before", he said. And he does that. In this restrained and beautifully tempered NT Live* production by Daldry (who directed The Reader and The Hours, films written by Hare), the political subtext only rarely obtrudes, notably in a second-act speech about social workers that draws an ovation from the audience. For the rest, it's a story of two unlikely lovers clinging to the wreckage in post-Thatcherite Britain.
They are Kyra (Mulligan in a West End debut), a teacher in a low-decile East End school who lives in a cold damp flat; and Tom (Nighy), a successful restaurateur (of "carpaccio- and risotto-stuffed" places in Chelsea) who arrives unannounced. They haven't spoken in years and their meeting is prefigured by a visit from Tom's 18-year-old son Edward (Beard). Slowly, over the course of several hours, a painful history is laid out.
