'Skylight' Opens at Merrimack Repertory Theatre

Skylight

By David Hare

Directed by Charles Towers; Scenic Designer, Bill Clarke; Costume Designer, Deborah Newhall; Lighting Designer, Dan Kotlowitz; Stage Manager, Emily F. McMullen; Casting Director, Harriet Bass

CAST

Amanda Fulks, Kyra Hollis; Joe Lanza, Edward Sergeant; Christopher McHale, Tom Sergeant

Performances through December 14 at Merrimack Repertory Theatre

Box Office 978-654-4MRT (4678) or www.merrimackrep.org

The Merrimack Repertory Theatre presents Skylight by acclaimed British playwright David Hare for the second play of this 30^th anniversary season. Artistic Director Charles Towers creates an intelligent piece of stagecraft that holds your attention and may make you reassess your own motives in personal relationships. Thanks to Hare's exquisite language and a trio of fine actors, the comic and dramatic moments are organic and clearly defined, artistically enhanced by Bill Clarke's design and Dan Kotlowitz's lighting of the shabby flat in northwest London.    

Schoolteacher Kyra has two unexpected visitors on a cold, snowy December night. First comes 18-year old Edward to seek her help with his father, still grieving the loss of his wife a year ago. After the son leaves, Tom Sergeant arrives to attempt to reconnect with his former lover. It is apparent that they have many differences, among them economic status, age, political beliefs, and core values, and they spend the bulk of the evening and early morning hashing them out. Like Kyra's apartment, barely warmed by a tiny electric heater, their conversation is chilly at the start, but heated words and bodies ensue.

The conflict lies in trying to understand or perhaps affix blame for Kyra's abrupt departure three years earlier when Tom's wife Alice learned of their six-year affair. As a trusted employee and pseudo member of the family, Kyra felt that she had no choice but to leave their home, while Tom remained to clean up the mess and, ultimately, care for Alice during her terminal illness. Edward was an innocent bystander to the affair as a boy, but is struggling to live with the man his father has become in the aftermath. He naively hopes to save him by rekindling the love with Kyra.

Listening to them recall and retell the past, each from a different perspective, it was hard for me to see why Tom and Kyra would have ever been lovers in the first place.  He may have served in loco pater for the young woman out on her own in the big city at the age of 18,  but his overbearing and controlling personality do not render him an obvious love object. As a take-no-prisoners successful businessman, Tom acquired the attractive Kyra as he would a new restaurant and molded her in his own image. Even as he is hoping to win her back, he demeans her choices of neighborhood, her flat, and her career, lacking the ability to understand that she values the life she has made for herself.   

Amanda Fulks makes this play into Kyra's story as she explores each facet of her life, with and since leaving the Sergeant family. During her initial visit with Edward, she is composed and a little distant, yet appropriately affectionate. Throughout the evening with Tom, she exhibits a range of emotions, from calm to high spirits, anger to tears, passion to emptiness, all the while moving about the stage, chopping vegetables and cooking as if she really lives there. She is totally natural in the role and allows the audience to feel both Kyra's joy and pain in this dilemma.

Christopher McHale excels at showing Tom's pompous bravado and is a commanding presence when he storms into Kyra's flat and her life unannounced. He exudes power and wealth, aided by the camel hair overcoat, silk scarf, and quality suit selected for him by Costume Designer Deborah Newhall. However, he is less believable in Tom's vulnerable moments, or when he finally admits his guilt over the situation. Edward is played with a mix of boyish awkwardness and burgeoning young man assertiveness by Joe Lanza. His sincerity in attempting to recruit Kyra to his cause masks the underlying fear and guilt that motivate him. Father and son never appear on the stage together, so it remains for Kyra to be the wireless connection between them, representing one's viewpoint to the other even as she strives to clarify and express her own position. Fulks is up to the task.

Skylight is a character-driven play about three complex people who have emotional strangleholds on each other, each struggling to keep afloat until the rescue boat arrives. Problem is, there are only two life rings onboard so someone is left to tread water. If this were a movie, I'd say there's a sequel in the works that will pick up the story in another couple of years with father beach bumming it in the islands after a hurried retirement, son overseeing a growing franchise of hot dog stands and living with Kyra, headmistress of an alternative school for disadvantaged children. However, it is a finite stage play that neatly ties up two threads as the third one continues to unravel, teaching some important life lessons along the way. Apparently, love does not conquer all.