It’s Betty’s 86th birthday, and she’s upset because John, her husband, has made her a cake, and it only has one candle on it. She’s also upset that, as an artist, her hands don’t work properly and she can’t paint or sculpt anymore. John, who is 85, is also unhappy, as he’s a writer whose muse has deserted him and he can no longer write. However, they have a plan, as years ago they made a pact that when their lives came to this, they would (no spoiler alert – it’s in the flyer advertising the play) choose their own moment to end everything, and that’s what Tim Stubbs-Hughes’s new play and I looked at the sky is all about – the story of an old married couple who have decided to die on their terms.
The first problem with the play – and there are many – is that Mary Tillett and John Rayment are far too young – I’m guessing by at least 20 years. Rayment’s Spotlight page gives his playing age as “52-67”, which doesn’t exactly scream 85. Neither actor looks, sounds or moves like someone in their ninth decade, making it difficult to believe in the characters or consequently care very much about them – any poignancy we should have felt about the couple and their situation is lost in this miscasting. Surely older actors could have been found? It’s not as though theatre is short of performers who might actually look like people in their 80s.
So not only is it hard to engage with the characters because we’re not watching two octogenarians, but Stubb-Hughe’s writing is very stylised and doesn’t flow. At times it had echoes of the rhythms and cadence of Beckett and Pinter, but these are very faint echoes. The piece is made up of some dialogue between the two – at one point, John tells Betty things she must have already known, in order for the audience to know their backstory – all very clunky and full of exposition we didn’t need. There are also a number of inner monologues where only one of the characters is on the stage and is talking to themselves. Also, whilst John is meek and submissive, Betty swears a lot for no reason. There are also a number of non-sequiturs – for example, John tells Betty that they’ve put all their affairs in order but goes on to say eventually their bodies will be found because the milk would have built up outside their house and parcels and letters would be returned.
The piece is very episodic with characters wandering on and off for no reason – sometimes there are black-outs between scenes, sometimes there aren’t. Occasionally some melancholic music accompanies the dialogue but this seems to be a bit random. Also some of the technical aspects don’t work – a TV screen is indicated by a light that doesn’t flicker and when the couple are burning their possessions, I thought I heard the sound of burning but I can’t be sure.
and I look at the sky is for some reason pretentiously always written in lower case and the pretention doesn’t end there. There’s a long scene where the couple ore getting rid of some of their possessions, putting things in various boxes. One of the boxes is marked “cremanda” and the other “servanda”; the Latin scholars amongst you will of course know they mean: “to be burnt” and “to be kept”!
There are some plays that should be awarded not stars but little beds indicating that some of the audience fell asleep during the performances. As I was in the front row last night, I couldn’t see behind me but the person sitting next to me, slept through most of it. It’s one of those plays that if it hadn’t been ninety minutes straight-through (and it seemed a lot longer), I’m not sure all of the audience would have returned after the interval.
In the marketing blurb and I look at the sky claims to be “simmering” – unfortunately, it never really comes to the boil.
Review by Alan Fitter
Betty and John have been married for a lifetime. They know how to make each other laugh and how to irritate each other. Almost everything there is to know about one another.
Betty is an artist. John is a writer. On her 86th birthday, he’s been digging up the last of the carrots to make her birthday cake. She’s wondering why there’s only one candle on it.
Between cake, memories, arguments and laughter, they circle around the thing neither quite knows how to say. Decades ago, they made a pact: when their creative lives were over, they would choose their own ending.
Now they have to decide whether the promise they made when they were young still belongs to the people they have become.
Written by Tim Stubbs Hughes
Directed by Julia Stubbs
With Mary Tillett and John Rayment
Lighting Design by Jonathan Samuels
Sound Design by James Connor
and I looked at the sky
Omnibus Theatre
15 September to 3 October 2026
