Skylight tells the tale of secrets, love and politics in England

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Is Skylight a vanity project, business as usual in the arts or a production that cleverly proves its own thesis?

Hidden Cove is a new company entering the Toronto theatre scene with a revival of David Hare's 1995 play, a tale of old lovers reconciled and irreconcilable politics. The artistic producer is a fellow named Lindsay G. Merrithew, an entrepreneur who has made a lot of money since the 1980s in fitness. His bio says he's a five-time recipient of Profit Magazine's Fastest-Growing Companies Award.

Merrithew is not only producing Skylight, he's also cast himself in the lead role, Tom Sergeant. It's a part he should understand – a businessman who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and now lives a life of carpaccio and chauffeurs as CEO of an international chain of hotels and restaurants. Skylight is set, however, in the poorly heated, run-down flat of Kyra Hollis (Sara Topham), a schoolteacher in a disadvantaged part of London.

Kyra used to be Tom's protege. She worked with him and lived with his family. She also had a six-year affair with the older man, which ended when Tom's wife, Alice, found out. Kyra disappeared. Then Alice was diagnosed with cancer. The play takes place about a year after Alice's death, when Tom shows up at Kyra's flat unannounced.

Being a play by Hare (Stuff Happens, The Judas Kiss), Skylight is not just about love but politics as well. It's set in the time it was written, after 16 years of Conservative rule that had transformed England for better or worse. Tom can't understand why Kyra, raised middle-class, is living like this when she could be making more money elsewhere – for instance, with him.

Kyra, however, thinks Tom's skepticism of people who work to better society is a sickness of the time. She has a speech about the "self-pity of the rich" that resonates as strongly as ever, in which she notes that making money is not only no longer considered a vice, but must be celebrated as the "creation of wealth." "No longer do [the rich] simply accumulate," she says. "Now they want people to line up and thank them as well."

It's curious that Merrithew has chosen this play to produce and star in. The last time The Globe and Mail reviewed his acting on a Toronto stage was 2001 – in a production of Macbeth that he also self-produced and starred in. Here's a fellow who chose to primarily pursue business rather than art, but he still wants people to buy a ticket and come to applaud him. Not for his amateur or charity productions.

And yet, if we dismissed all self-produced work as vanity, that would exclude a lot of theatre in this town. Truthfully, he is pretty good as Tom, if a little light on the contrarian charisma the part depends on. His physicality can be mannered – he's always making the okay sign with his right hand, poking at his nose, and seems to be doing a slow-motion tap dance for much of the first act. This was a much less noisy distraction in the second half when he was in his bare feet.

Topham – an in-demand Canadian actress, who has been off doing classics in New York, London and Macau in recent years – gives a very solid performance as Kyra. But there's something a little too poised about it – and indeed, the production. There's not enough of a connection, never mind chemistry, between her and Merrithew.

Director Larry Moss, mystifyingly, has both his leads act out to the audience a lot. In a show that's about secrets and private moments where dinner gets made on stage, smaller, more naturalistic performances are needed.

Without feeling the leads' passion, Hare's play is left exposed and seems overly schematic.

Skylight continues to July 9 (skylightto.com).