David Hare's Skylight debuted 22 years ago, but the socio-political themes the playwright addresses in the text are just as relevant today, if not more so. The two main characters (there is a third, but he is largely peripheral) represent the chasm between the two main attitudes toward society in British life - empathy and apathy.
East End school teacher Kyra is a forthright defender of the underdog, the dispossessed and the disadvantaged. She teaches difficult children in a difficult school in a difficult part of London because she believes she is doing good, that she is improving their lives and so, by association, is making the most of her own.
However, moneyed restaurateur Tom is in denial about how much good Kyra can do, and whether she really means what she says or whether she is holding herself back through some form of self-piteous punishment. Kyra lives in a freezing cold flat in Kensal Rise and seems relatively happy there, insisting that this way of living is really quite normal. Tom refuses to believe that is the case, and pushes Kyra to make more of herself, her intellect and her talents, to apply herself to self-improvement rather than that of others less fortunate than her.
