Skylight, David Hare’s postmortem look at an adulterous couple’s unexpected reunion, gets a terrific 24th-anniversary Chance Theater revival under Oanh Nguyen’s incisive direction.

Jessica Erin Martin makes an auspicious Chance debut as 30-year-old schoolteacher Kyra Hollis, scarcely back at her East London flat when recent high school grad Edward Sargeant (Sam Bullington) shows up on her doorstep.

 Why, wonders Edward, did Kyra not only quit working for his restaurateur father Tom (Steve Marvel) after six years on the job but then simply vanish from their lives.

Kyra’s unexpected visitor has come to ask a favor as well, that she attempt to help Tom recover from his wife Alice’s cancer death last year.

Not long after Edward’s departure, who should arrive but Tom himself in a bid to rekindle a six-year affair carried on behind an unsuspecting Alice’s back, that is until her discovery of their relationship sent Kyra packing with no intention ever to return.

Let the reminiscences, recriminations, and revelations begin.

Dissecting the almost unbridgeable gaps between a man who raised himself up from his bootstraps in Thatcher’s England and a woman who left a privileged upbringing to teach in an East London slum, Skylight turns out to be as much about the philosophies that keep Tom and Kyra apart as it is about the feelings that brought them together.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, Hare’s 1994 three-hander tends towards a talkiness that could easily prove soporific, but the compelling performances director Nguyen has elicited go a long way towards maintaining audience focus.

Charismatic Texas-to-SoCal transplant Bullington is both heartbreaking and irresistible as a young man not quite ready for adulthood, and a mostly solid Marvel gives us a Tom whose self-assurance and business drive first attracted Kyra, then ended up driving her away.

Still, it is Martin’s luminous Kyra that audiences will be remembering long after Skylight’s fade to black, the Chance newcomer taking a character who in less innately likable hands could easily curry disfavor and giving her more than enough heart and gumption to balance some rather questionable life choices, and a central London accent so authentic, you’d swear the Seattleite was UK born and raised.

Not only that, but Martin manages to chop, mix, and fry up spaghetti sauce ingredients and boil pasta on an onstage electric range while accomplishing all of the above.

Scenic designer Bruce Goodrich gets top marks for Kyra’s ratty East London flat’s dingy interior (aided by Megan Hill’s just-right props), but the framed squares and rectangles seen through its translucent walls prove a confusing distraction.

Adriana Lambarri’s character-perfect costumes, Matt Schleicher’s drama-and-intimacy-enhancing lighting, and Ryan Brodkin’s edgy sound design are all winners as is Glenda Morgan Brown’s dialect coaching.

Bebe Herrera is stage manager. Jocelyn L. Buckner is dramaturg.

Certain to inspire particularly spirited discussions at post-show talkbacks, Skylight once again shows off Chance Theater as its best-in-intimate-OC-theater best.

Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills.
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
April 27, 2019
Photos: Doug Catiller, True Image Studio

Tags: Chance Theater, David Hare, Orange County Theater Review