Theatre
Skylight
Valletta Campus Theatre
Observing the landscape of human interaction and the motivations of different individuals has been the preserve of playwrights from the very start.
Nobody does it better in a contemporary setting than David Hare, whose 1995 play Skylight is currently running at the Valletta Campus Theatre as MADC’s first production of the season.
Hare’s script is as current now as it was in the post-Thatcherite setting that he originally wrote it in. It takes the setting of the kitchen sink drama and transforms it from angry young man to disillusioned young woman.
Simone Spiteri gives an excellent portrayal of Kyra Hollis; she is the embodiment of an educated young woman from a privileged background who chooses to leave her comfortable life to teach maths at a faltering comprehensive in Finchley.
Thomas Camilleri’s clever set design is complimented by Chris Gatt’s lighting design to create a mood for the intensive character study of this play.
The limited amount of characters here allowed the content to focus squarely on the interrelationships between the three, with Kyra as the lynch-pin holding parallel relationships with father and son, who both visit her and reproachfully accuse her of abandonment.
Teenager Edward Sergeant (Alex Weenink) turns up on Kyra’s doorstep and attempts to reconnect, following a separation of several years, with the woman whom he looked up to as an older sister and role model.
Hare’s criticism still matters and the issues are still relevant
Weenink’s enthusiasm is evident but lacks the maturity and clarity of diction which his role requires. Nevertheless, his was an honest and solid performance. He feels that his trust has been broken and tells Kyra that his father has been acting strangely since his mother’s death.
Kyra, who feels ambivalent towards her former lover and employer, Tom Sergeant – played brilliantly by Stephen Oliver – attempts to brush Edward off. This particular scene functions not only as a means of introducing Kyra’s situation but also delves into her relationship with Edward and paves the way for her much longer interaction with Tom.
From the frying pan into the fire: Simone Spiteri and Alex Weenink.Oliver delivers a crisp rendition of a self-made man – a wealthy restauranteur who enjoys the finer things in life because he can and attempts to engage with Spiteri’s Kyra by questioning her motives in leaving her past, comfortable life behind, for what he sees to be a hemmed-in life of drudgery and monotony.
Kyra’s persistent mantra through all this is that she finds her life to be more purposeful doing what she does, in spite of the glaring dissonance between her old life and her new one.
Hers is not an attempt at transition but a breaking away and a rediscovery of herself. Spiteri gave a confident performance as the resolute Kyra, who is willing to face the struggles and challenges her newly-chosen life offers her, not because she wants to make a difference but because it makes a difference to her. Attempting to explain this to Tom over a kitchen counter full of ingredients and food prep as she makes spaghetti on stage, Spiteri is clearly at the helm and matches Oliver’s lead pace for pace.
Director André Agius approaches Hare’s script sensitively and takes on the spirit in which this character analysis becomes the character assessment of a nation in flux.
With a conservative, Thatcherite legacy criticised from the 1990s origins of the piece under John Major to the contemporary Theresa May, by way of Labour governments whose positions did not vary much from the Tories in their centralist views, this piece proves that the system was consequently left as flawed as it had been in the 1980s.
This is why Hare’s criticism still matters and why the issues are still relevant. The characters embodied by the three actors show a divide between two worlds in London – the affluent Tom and Edward, living south of the river with their SW postcode and their million-pound home in Wimbledon Village, and the deliberately de-gentrified Kyra, living north of the river, in a rough tenement in Finchley, with no heating and aggressive students. Bedfellows who are now worlds apart.
MADC has done us all a great service in showcasing this excellent piece of theatre which certainly deserves attentive viewing.
Skylight is being staged at the Valletta Campus Theatre (ex MITP) on Friday and Sunday at 8pm and on Saturday at 6.30pm.