Play: Skylight

Overview
David Hare's Skylight is an intimate, three-character drama set in 1990s London that entwines a rekindled affair with a debate about class, responsibility, and the moral obligations of love. Over one wintry night and the following morning, it pits two former lovers, one a wealthy restaurateur, the other a dedicated inner-city schoolteacher, against each other in a charged confrontation about how to live, what to value, and whether the past can be remade.

Characters and Setup
Kyra Hollis has retreated to a small, sparsely furnished flat and a punishing workload at a struggling school. Her self-imposed austerity is both refuge and manifesto, a way of living that aligns with her belief in service and accountability. Tom Sergeant, once Kyra’s boss and lover, has prospered; he runs a chain of fashionable restaurants and embodies a brisk, entrepreneurial confidence. His wife, Alice, discovered the affair years earlier and has recently died of cancer, leaving Tom and his teenage son, Edward, bereft and adrift.

Plot
The play opens with Edward dropping by Kyra’s flat. Restless and sardonic, he confides his frustration with his father’s bluster and emotional evasions, and he hints at the wreckage left by the affair. He departs, and later that night Tom arrives unannounced, propelled by grief, nostalgia, and a need to reclaim something lost. What begins as wary reminiscence slides into a long, volatile bout of intimacy and argument.

As Kyra cooks a simple meal, their conversation braids tenderness and exasperation. Tom romanticizes their past and ridicules the discomforts of her present life; he cannot fathom why she has chosen hardship over the ease he can offer. Kyra insists that moral seriousness requires proximity to those who most need it, that her students and colleagues anchor her in a reality from which Tom is insulated. The cooking onstage becomes a counterpoint to their talk: the practical rhythms of slicing and stirring ground a debate otherwise in danger of drifting into abstraction.

Old wounds bleed afresh. Kyra left not only because of Alice’s discovery but because the affair, once exposed, demanded evasions she could no longer tolerate. Tom’s guilt about Alice, sharpened by grief, collides with his impatience at Kyra’s strictness. Late in the night, desire and memory draw them back together; by morning, the same fault lines have reopened. Tom offers rescue, work, a house, a return to their former glamour, without conceding the values underlying Kyra’s choices. She replies that love without change would only repeat harm.

Themes
The drama juxtaposes private and public ethics. Hare stages a love story as an argument about the uses of privilege, the costs of integrity, and the legacy of Thatcher-era individualism. Kyra asserts that meaning is made through service and tough proximity; Tom trusts energy, charisma, and material generosity. Both are sincere, both compromised. The play refuses to crown either victor, finding dignity in Kyra’s scruple and pathos in Tom’s hunger for absolution.

Structure and Staging
Confined to Kyra’s flat and unfolding in near-real time, the play’s naturalism intensifies its moral inquiry. Real cooking, steam, smell, the clatter of pans, gives the arguments weight and immediacy, the domestic acting as crucible for political and emotional stakes. The title points to moments of illumination that cut through gloom without dispelling it entirely.

Resolution
Tom departs, chastened yet unconverted. In the final scene, Edward returns with an awkward, hopeful gesture of connection, suggesting a different path: attention rather than grand offers, care rather than conquest. The future remains uncertain, but the play leaves a sliver of light, a promise that compassion and clarity can be chosen, even when reconciliation cannot.