‘Skylight’ shines brightly Acting, directing drive latest PTC offering

The main character in “Skylight” is:

a) Kira, a young woman who teaches underprivileged youngsters;

b) Tom, the wealthy, older businessman who was Kira’s lover until three years ago and who hasn’t seen her since;

c) Edward, Tom’s 18-year-old son;

d) Alice, Tom’s late wife, who died one year ago; or

e) You, the theatergoer.

Sure, e) is the easy answer, and a correct one, this being an award-winning play by British writer David Hare, who also penned “The Blue Room.” But force yourself to consider the characters, how you react to them, and why.

Were you glad Kira and Tom skipped dinner and disappeared behind the bedroom door, or were you rooting for her to kick him out on his sorry butt?

Did you think the heck with them, and just want the hurting teen-ager to turn out OK?

If you haven’t been to the current production of the Penobscot Theatre Company at the Bangor House, go.

Note the exceptional acting by Jennifer McEwen, Jim Butterfield and Alex Gunn and the great direction by Mark Torres.

If you’re not used to the English accents, you’ll have to pay close attention, but the effort is worth it.

You have to love McEwen’s Kira, who now devotes herself to her pupils. She once lived in Tom’s upscale home but walked out the day Alice discovered the affair.

Now Kira pays attention to her well-developed conscience, and heaves a bunch of utensils in Tom’s direction when he won’t get off his upper-class high horse.

There, in her sad little apartment – perfectly rendered by Jay Skriletz’s set design – she gives Tom, and his capitalist society, pluperfect hell.

Tom has his own blow-up about the vast difference between their values, and you don’t have to love him but maybe you will. Maybe you’ll be touched by his feelings that God must have given his wife cancer to punish him.

Credit Butterfield, an actor who works throughout New England, for creating a pompous Tom who really isn’t very lovable. Go ahead, believe Kira when she says he used to be different.

Gunn, a Seattle actor who is in scenes with Minnesota native McEwen, is just right as Edward, full of anger over his dead mother and his emotionally unavailable father.

Edward misses having Kira as a part of the family. And what does Kira miss?

These three actors are welcome in Bangor any time. McEwen was Ophelia in Maine Shakespeare Festival’s “Hamlet” last summer, and Gunn will tour schools with MSF’s “Macbeth” this spring.

The Penobscot Theatre Company will perform “Skylight” at 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Bangor Opera House. Call 942-3333.