A masterclass in the art of being Bill Nighy
Skylight (Wyndham’s Theatre) Verdict: Nighy-on perfect
BILL NIGHY at full belt on stage is astonishing, unbalancing, unforgettable. He throws every Nighy-ish tic and mannerism at the performance. He is no longer playing the character in the play (in this case Sir David Hare’s 1995 dialectic Skylight). He becomes Bill Nighy playing Bill Nighy playing that character.
Here it is, a rich widower who has visited his idealistic ex-mistress at her grotty London council flat. Kyra (Carey Mulligan) is a prissy altruist who used to work for restaurateur Tom (Mr Nighy) and had a six-year affair with him. She now teaches at an East Ham comprehensive. Tom turns up in the hope of winning back Kyra.
The play’s opening scene is between Kyra and Tom’s teenage son (Matthew Beard). Mr Beard does all right, but this is a book-end part. Things do not ignite until the arrival of Mr Nighy. And how! He bursts through the door and in a trice he is doing a near-pastiche of himself.
He casts low his gaze and then flicks it back, as though he has just woken from a snooze. There are feints of hand to hip, half-knuckled wipes of the mouth.
We are meant to see Tom as a self-obsessive, sarcastically funny, caddish Right-winger. All we can really see is Bill Nighy, but he is a joy to watch — and he and Miss Mulligan have more chemistry than Astra Zeneca.
It makes for mesmerising spectacle. The pairing of these two by director Stephen Daldry was inspired. Miss Mulligan, 29, may be perhaps ten years too young to play Kyra but my goodness she holds her own. A moment when she hurls a drawer of cutlery is as good an outbreak of anger as I have seen on stage.
Sir David’s story of the tussle between Left-wing idealism and Right-wing energy has dated. It is harder to believe Kyra’s insistence that her bog-standard comp is an answer to poverty. Today’s Kyras might more convincingly be found in a townhouse near Ed Miliband’s Primrose Hill.