Lantern Theater's "Skylight' (2nd review)

That moment when we burn our bridges

JIM RUTTER

When he reviewed New York theater for The New Republic in the 1950s, the legendary critic Eric Bentley expressed the bulk of his dissatisfaction with the new plays of his era—including those of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams—by arguing that psychological conflict isn’t drama, and that the “proper stuff of great drama is not neurosis but immorality.” The playwrights of Bentley’s day, who were still riding the wave of the “new” science of psychology (not to mention the obscenely subjective and nihilistic philosophy of existentialism), gave him plenty to criticize.

Nearly half a century later, David Hare’s 1995 Skylight, with its multiple overt references to Freud (of all psychologists, the most dated), still swims in the wake of that same current that crafted minor conflict out of mere psychological problems. As a result, very little happens in a play where, over the course of an evening in a London apartment, a pair of former lovers—Kyra (Genevieve Perrier) and Tom (Peter DeLaurier)—find one last chance to come to terms with the tortured history of their separation.

Three years earlier, you see, they split when Tom’s recently deceased wife discovered their six-year affair on the heels of a terminal cancer diagnosis; and though they’re still in love with each other, Tom and Kyra have since forged separate paths. He’s sublimated his grief in expanding his successful business; she’s denied the life they once shared by purposefully living in near-poverty and burying her prodigious intellect and “first-class degree” by teaching the “kids at the bottom of the heap,” who not only don’t deserve what she can offer, but spit on her as well (literally).

When the stakes are small

Though Tom marks his entrance by stating, “I wanted to say, ‘I’m not guilty’,” over the course of the evening it becomes clear that they’ve both spent the last three years rationalizing their decisions— creating layers of false beliefs to compensate for the loss of their happiness while punishing themselves for the depth of their guilt. What’s at stake—both want forgiveness and a chance to move forward—is incredibly personal and small, and the concerns are entirely local.

Indeed, the entire two hours seem merely an illustration of the play’s expressly stated theme: “For everything you repress, there’s a price to be paid.” By Eric Bentley’s definition, great drama it’s not. Yet the Lantern production proves that compelling direction and a pair of richly textured performances can magnify the dramatic power of minor concerns into an event of staggering proportions.

DeLaurier takes the most hated character in the theater (if not in life)—a businessman—and plays him with an admirable straightforwardness, while wracking his unapologetic pride of commercial success with a deep longing for personal happiness, and mediates this conflict through often painful, near-breakdown moments expressing his guilt. (This guilt reflects Hare’s cliché misperception of a world unknown to most playwrights: Studies show that successful people are actually happier, especially when they’re rich.)

An internal battle revealed

And Perrier’s superior performance shows a character who physically does little but follow director Dan Kern’s simple staging, but whose nuanced gestures, facial expressions, and moods reveal an internal battle between the similar “self-righteous” pride of a teacher bent on social justice and the cloistered lifestyle she’s imposed with such discipline that she refuses to answer the simple question, “But are you happy?”

To avoid her feelings, Kyra locked herself from the world, no longer reading newspapers or watching TV. Her only contact with reality involves eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers on her long bus commute to work. As Tom’s accurate criticisms strip away the walls of her pretended fulfillment, Perrier descends into long blank stares of introspection, where, hiding from her terror, she simply disappears, leaving an empty space on the stage that’s equally terrifying and phenomenal to witness.

What neither can do is repair the gulf that’s grown between them and the former happiness they once shared. Like Yasmina Reza’s oft-produced Art (ending this weekend at the Delaware Theatre Company)— where a 15-year friendship falls apart over an aesthetic judgment— the central problem holding Tom and Kyra back from a future together is how to come to terms with someone who used to share their values but now falls short. As both plays show, the answer often lies in either begrudgingly accepting or completely leaving someone whose life we can no longer respect— a struggle implicitly understood by anyone who’s ever lost a friend because dissonance bred contempt.

If only real people were this interesting

But while Hare presents a common experience, these are not everyman characters. Listening to their near-poetic expressiveness of their thoughts and emotions, I found myself wishing people were this interesting in real life, even when struggling with a seemingly universal human experience.

In the grand scheme of drama or life, the stakes are small, but Perrier and DeLaurier play the lines as if the happiness of their entire future hangs in the balance—a psychological problem, to be sure, but a moment of near-universal quality. It’s possible that what Bentley’s aristocratic and exalted view of the theater couldn’t handle was just how democratic this elite art form had become, and how an internal struggle with one’s own beliefs or psychology now represents the arena of true conflict in the theater, if not in TV. (Like Bentley, I’m not sure I like this development, either.)

The conflict of Skylight boils down to a moment of decision from which there can be no turning back. Rather than condensing this struggle into the fate of two lives in a one-room apartment, a grander view of the theater would long to see Cortés setting fire to his ships or Napoleon sacrificing thousands to press onward to Moscow in the snow. But with actors like DeLaurier and Perrier playing a businessman and a schoolteacher, the Lantern’s stunning production of Hare’s play shows that their moment of bridge-burning is just as powerful to witness.



To read a response, click here.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.