The story -- which mixes doomed love, cancer, and class differences -- could work as a skeleton for a pulpy novel; but for Hare it's the setting for a meaty argument between our personal lives and political ideals. In leaving the shelter of Tom's affluence, Kyra learns for the first time "how most people live" and decides to work for the poor. When Tom finds her, his wife has died; but a deeper, more insurmountable gulf of class has grown between them.
Tony Taccone's direction of this slice of inspired realism veritably hums with talent. Christopher Barreca's hyperrealist set -- complete with a working stove, Post-Its, and falling snow -- reminds us that this is not an allegory. Composer Paul Gordon captures the haunting urgency of the script with his sweeping electronic chord progressions. Frank Corrado purrs with arrogance and charisma as the brokenhearted businessman who tosses out chauvinist maxims ("Listening's halfway to begging") and still remains irresistible. Susan-Jane Harrison steps carefully between self-righteousness and hunched vulnerability. One minute she's spitting venomously -- "Suddenly this new disease: self-pity for the rich!" -- and the next minute she's helplessly silent in the face of Tom's crushing contempt for her work. And the young, wily David Talbott as the would-be homeboy works an astonishing range of adolescent anger, sweetness, and wisdom into his limited role.
Class conflict is rarely dealt with by contemporary American playwrights. Hare has spent his life doggedly pursuing it, with a surprising amount of success. From his appointment as playwright-in-residence at the Royal Court in 1970 to the Broadway show and subsequent movie of Plenty in the early '80s to the current success of Skylight and the Broadway opening of The Judas Kiss this month, Hare has remained a peculiar figure in theater history: a commercially viable political playwright, a stubborn realist in a time of genre-blending, and a guy who continues to talk about the immorality of capitalism long after most Marxists have turned in their berets for stock portfolios.
But in the tradition of Shaw -- the socialist who gave his capitalist characters the most articulate arguments -- Hare's plays never collapse into preaching. When Kyra claims she's just like the struggling people who surround her, Tom snarls: "In one thing you're different: You've fought hard to get in it, when everyone else is trying so hard to get out." And in the end, Hare comes very close to damning self-sacrificing Kyra when he allows her to admit: "I have become my anger." Pity the poor creatures who live according to their social conscience.
-- Carol Lloyd
