Precis and press

Kyra is a young teacher working and living in one of London‘s less attractive districts. Tom‘s wife has recently died of cancer: he is a wealthy entrepreneur and Kyra‘s former lover. On a cold winter night Tom‘s teenage son, Edward, calls on the young teacher to beg her to be reconciled with his father.

Tom himself arrives, wishing to expiate his guilt and renew his lust. Kyra complies, sort of, until the debate soars and the insults fly in a way that makes you wish your own kitchen-table tiffs were half as brutal, half as civilised. David Hare‘s passionate play is sharp and satisfying, an impassioned head-on collision of values and confused desires.



A magnificent chamber play by one of the few major playwrights in our language. Quite unlike his "social" trilogy [Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War], Hare is here dealing with gentler matters of life, love and circumstance...Skylight might well one day take its place among the small, residual handful of fin de siecle classics.
New York Post

There are times in the theatre when you suddenly find yourself in the grip of silence. There is no fidgeting or coughing no shifting about in seats: the audience‘s attention is so tense, it is almost palpable. This is because it can sense that what is happening on the stage is both thrilling and dangerous: a fight to the death, or the dawning of salvation. David Hare‘s new play, Skylight, is punctuated by such moments. They are the signs that a dramatist of the first rank is writing at full stretch, in complete command of his material, undogmatic and unafraid, unforgiving but compassionate.
Sunday Times

The play of the decade.
Spectator