“Skylight” Theater review

Society looms large in the Stephen Daldry’s charged revival of David Hare’s “Skylight­” — and not just in the second-act state-of-the-nation wrangle between low-income schoolteacher Kyra (Mulligan) and shamelessly rich restaurateur Tom (Nighy). Bob Crowley’s set, backed by a colorful but defiantly drab bank of tenement windows (“council flats” to the British), never lets you forget the wider world beyond Kyra’s drab, barely heated flat. No matter how bitterly personal—or airily abstract—things get between these ex-lovers, you cannot ignore the unseen lives going on behind so many strangers’ panes. The bulk of Hare’s long theatrical output has doggedly tracked his political and cultural times, a commitment to the now that potentially slaps an expiration date on a work of art. “Skylight,” while it doesn’t burst with topical references, is very much a post-Thatcher, pre-Blair play, with capitalist bullyboys such as Tom maintaining business as usual and disenchanted insiders such as Kyra dedicating themselves to repairing the damage of the ’80s.