THEATRE: Andrew Wilson
IF governance, current ideology and politics in Britain are supposed to be that society’s expression of its ideals and values, playwright David Hare is a disappointed man.
Writing in 1991, he maintained theatre was in a unique position to illustrate “an age in which men’s ideals and men’s practice bear no relation to each other; in which the public profession of … socialism has often been reduced by the passage of history to wearying personal fetish or even chronic personality disorder”. Hare bemoans the fact that Labour Party members he thought had convictions, turned out to be seekers of knighthoods and power.
In Skylight, at the Market Theatre, his rebuttal of the malaise in British society finds resonance in two ex-lovers who meet again after three years, only to find themselves on the horns of an emotional, political and social dilemma: its dynamics see them struggling to define themselves in terms of each other and in terms of a broader social context.
Kyra is a teacher in a London East End slum school. She’s independent, determined and doesn’t exist solely in terms of men. Three years before she left a cocktail lifestyle with her married lover Tom to take up a philanthropic existence in a seedy slum flat. After his wife’s death, Tom visits Kyra and what ensues is verbal, wall-to-wall emotional and intellectual cut-and-thrust; a fine study of two characters whose political persuasions and personal feelings are so intertwined that no measure of understanding could resolve the conflict.
Tom is a restaurateur and arch capitalist. He berates Kyra for wasting her intellect on a bunch of kids going nowhere, while she spits fire at his lack of social conscience. Hare uses the character to challenge what he sees as the political hypocrisy of 1990s Britain, and the consequent inability of “authority” to address a real, struggling and disillusioned society. She attacks him for looking down on those sectors of society which do the real work: teachers, or social workers, who have to clean up the mess made by people out of touch with reality.
For Hare, Britain is guilty of class consciousness, albeit a more subtle, yet no less discriminating version of its predecessor. He chooses the name “Kyra” because a British audience is “finely attuned to names because they reveal a person’s class. I do not want the audience to know what class this woman is. Not at first.”
Despite the saturating political undertones, the text is never overwhelmed by the context, and every word is born of an emotional, personal reality. It never becomes didactic or rhetorical – for all its debate, it is finally character-driven, and there is its strength.
Jennifer Steyn’s Kyra is a beautiful and intricately woven study of a woman whose idealism and rejection of her past is pitted against her desire to love. Like a young Glenda Jackson, she commutes between a range of emotions with ease and maturity. Ron Smerczak’s Tom is a huge presence, bringing all the trappings of wealth, power and personal weakness into Kyra’s new world.
As critics have pointed out, if there’s a fault in Clare Stopford’s Market Theatre production, it lies in the staging, where major speeches are sometimes unsuccessfully split between the three-sided audience. But, while the play’s dynamics may well have been better served with a degree of distance, it is also possible that the uncomfortable immediacy of Stopford’s staging may, in fact, heighten the issues that the work raises.
David Hare says Skylight is about “an intense love affair”, but there’s no doubt that, as in the past, his characters are direct products of the society he has consistently confronted and penetrated.
Skylight can be seen at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg until December 7