AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

Omnibus Theatre

★★★

“sparkles with wit and nostalgia and a precarious kind of longing”

John does have a point. You’d be hard pushed to fit eighty-six candles on a small birthday cake. So, he made do with one. Betty still complains, however, even though John was up in the early hours baking the cake from scratch. But it’s not about the candle, really. Nor the cake. The cake is symbolic. Its fresh ingredients contrast with the fusty features of a marriage. It is Betty’s birthday – she is a year older than her eighty-five-year-old husband, but her dour expression belies a greater chasm. She spends a lot of time grumbling.

John (John Rayment) is a writer with a shelf full of his published works. Betty (Mary Tillett), an artist. Thery both appear to have enjoyed success in their chosen field, but their creativity has, at last, dried up. Decades ago, they made a pact: when their creative lives were over, they would choose to end their own lives. Together. The time has come to test whether they are going to fulfil this early promise.

Many themes are explored along the way in Tim Stubbs Hughes’ two-hander. The longevity of human connection, ageing, creativity and, above all, the right to choose how we live and ultimately how – and when – we leave this world. It seems that John and Betty have no more memories to build. Their house has boxes full of them and their minds are overflowing. Betty no longer believes in her art. John thinks he hasn’t written anything worthwhile for years. The time seems right. The main gripe I have with this play is that we are half expecting (even urging) John to look up from his newspaper and say, “you go ahead, dear, I’ll follow on later”.

It is hard to warm to Betty’s character which weakens somewhat the intense bond we are supposed to detect between the couple. Mary Tillett’s performance is steeped in naturalism and integrity in which frustration and anger dominate, burying the tenderness that is essential to fully draw us in. John Rayment has a seemingly lighter task as John, yet he finds more nuance. His patience discovers it is not limitless after all, while he decides he doesn’t have to spend all his time appeasing Betty. The fact that they are each given lengthy monologues, while the other is offstage, suggests that they are not quite as intimate as Stubbs Hughes would like us to believe. John has taken to watching television alone at night. When they roll the dice to determine a date for their suicide pact, the crackling emotion is missing.

What this show has in abundance, however, is a poetry of language that the duo deliver with a stop-start musicality. Director Julia Stubbs cues the pauses on the right beat while the dialogue has the rhythms of a rhapsody. The tempo shifts from ballad to protest song; sometimes sad, sometimes full of angst. A description of sunlight on the bedroom wall is full of melancholy and, as they pack away the material clutter of their lives, we are reminded of Stoller and Leiber’s song of disillusionment ‘Is That All There Is?’.

“Will we be missed?” they ask. ‘Will they miss each other?’ is the question we ask. Betty has plenty to get off her shoulder, but she shares it with the audience rather than with John. How she nearly left him, for example. John discovers an early abandoned short story that he feels inspired to return to. Is that enough to call off their pact? You know I’m not going to reveal whether they go through with it or not. But I can reveal that there are some sharp reflections on life as John and Betty wade through their past, looking for themselves.

Two boxes are labelled in Latin; ‘cremanda’ (to burn) and ‘servanda’ (to be kept), into which they pack away their memorabilia. What are echoes of the past and what is just clutter? “And I Looked at the Sky” takes its time to explore its key themes, and we have to separate the clutter from the gems. But when it shines, it sparkles with wit and nostalgia and a precarious kind of longing.

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed on 17th September 2026

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Samuel Brooks

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

★★★★

“the success of this play really lies with the performances”

Chekhov in Moscow at The Space Arts Centre on the Isle of Dogs will delight Chekhov fans. The script is packed with memorable lines and is performed by talented actors. If the set and lighting are a bit makeshift, it does not matter. This lively script, written by Mike Carter, and with some help from Chekhov himself, takes the audience to Moscow in the year 1896 or thereabouts, where the playwright is still smarting from the disastrous reception of The Seagull, even
though he is a successful and celebrated short story writer.

Enter actress Olga Knipper (whom Chekhov will marry in 1901) and director Konstantin Stanislavski, who together save him from despair and turn his playwriting life around. But instead of focusing on Chekhov’s rise to fame with the Moscow Art Theatre, which Stanislavski founded, Carter chooses instead to focus on the short plays that Chekhov wrote. His “vaudevilles” as the playwright described them dismissively. Chekhov in Moscow begins with Knipper and Stanislavski waiting impatiently for some new pages that Chekhov has promised them. The playwright soon appears, or rather, tries to sneak as unobtrusively as possible into the rehearsal room because, of course — and every playwright will be familiar with this moment — he has not written them. When confronted with his failure to produce the playwriting goods, Chekhov quips “New pages? Just put people in a room and start them arguing.” And we are off. The next fifty five minutes consist of Olga, Konstantin, and Chekhov’s favourite actor, Alexander Artyom, trying to get Chekhov back to work. They hit on the idea of presenting some extracts from Chekhov’s shorts The Bear and A Tragedian In Spite Of Himself. But while the playwright writhes with embarrassment, or covers his head with his hands at the revival of these early works in 1896, audiences in 2019 will find plenty to laugh at in these charming pieces.

The strengths of this production of Chekhov in Moscow are not just in the writing, but in the acting. There is some fine directing by Elizabeth Quinn as well. But the success of this play really lies with the performances of Louise Devlin, playing Knipper, Edward Tidy as Stanislavski, Anthony Cozens as Chekhov, and John Rayment taking on the Falstaffian role of Chekhov’s friend Alexander Artyom. If there is one performance that deserves to be singled out from this talented quartet, it would be that of Louise Devlin, who brings both versatility and intensity to the role of Knipper (and female and male roles in the vaudevilles). Her acting is persuasive, and by the end of Chekhov in Moscow she has, as Knipper, persuaded the character of Chekhov himself. “You make me feel magnificent” she tells him. Inspirational words for any playwright to hear.

So if you have ever thought that Chekhov is not the playwright for you, try Chekhov in Moscow as an entertaining introduction to the playwright and his milieu. You will even enjoy the easy bus ride from Canary Wharf to The Space Arts Centre, where you can enjoy a drink in the charming cafe before the beginning of the show.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Greg Baldock

Tag Archives: John Rayment

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

★★★

Omnibus Theatre

AND I LOOKED AT THE SKY

Omnibus Theatre

★★★

“sparkles with wit and nostalgia and a precarious kind of longing”