Live not live

Bill Nighy and Cary Mulligan in Skylight, a play performed in 2014 but written by David Hare in 1995 and set in that time when people used the Yellow Pages (a running gag in the play) and smartphones weren’t invented. Came complete with an interval of 20 minutes. Our late autumn cinema was cold but TSM (ever the detective) noted that the audience in the theatre were dressed for summer. 

An intense, funny and brilliantly acted and staged play. So worth braving the cold for. It’s a story of love and growing / not growing, a world where you want things the way they were but you can’t have them again, a "starfish on the beach" world where you might save one person but not the whole world. The protagonist’s characters are believable, and the social commentary bitingly relevant thirty years on: 

"I’m tired of these right-wing fuckers. They wouldn’t lift a finger themselves. They work contentedly in offices and banks. Yet now they sit pontificating in parliament, in papers, impugning our motives, questioning our judgements. And why? Because they themselves need to feel better by putting down everyone whose work is so much harder than theirs. You only have to say the words ‘social worker’…’probation officer’ … ‘counsellor’ … for everyone in this country to sneer. Do you know what social workers do? Every day? They try and clear out society’s drains. They clear out the rubbish. They do what no one else is doing, what no one else is willing to do."


Suella Braverman to a t. Catch it if you can.