‘What goes around, comes around’, would be an ideal subtitle for David Hare’s Skylight. Premiered in 1995, when a disillusioned Britain was in the economic and political doldrums of the post-Thatcher era, this play’s examination of polarised attitudes to the socio-economic status quo is eerily pertinent as Australia approaches the federal election next weekend. It may be set in a different country, 20-years in the past, but its portrait of the grotesque disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” of our society remains sickeningly familiar.

Set in a dingy, run-down council flat in North London, Hare’s approach is both edifying and inspired; his three characters are symbolic archetypes. Kyra Hollis (Anna Samson) is a thirty-something teacher and a quintessential champagne socialist. Her privileged but emotionally chilly upbringing has made her yearn for a life of determined, passionate struggle. She’s found it by living in skid-row poverty and by using her first-class degree to teach maths to thuggish adolescents in a failing school. Tom Sergeant (Colin Friels) is her antithesis; a successful restauranteur and hotelier who has built up a fortune from scratch. His fulfilment in life is intrinsically attached to his wealth and a belief that...