Dealing with Clair

Anna Sokolova
Jul 25
3 min read

Old Fitz Theatre Sydney, 10-25 July 2026

Produced by Irregular Programming Irregular Programming

The review

The story, structured on, as it seems, the dry, well-regulated and logical process of real estate deals, finds itself underlined by a layer of something disquieted.

Clair (Olivia Hall-Smith), a young real estate agent, is in her room, in a small studio, on a foldable bed, talking on the phone with her mother. The room is framed by wooden poles and a long bar - easily transformable into a house that she will try to sell later. While speaking, she must raise her voice each time a deafening sound of a passing train covers it all, along with flashing lights of long skinny lamps along the ceiling. The insane environment is a norm for so-called “flats on a track” - a new wave of investment property during 80th, a blooming real estate market time in London.

Based on the unsolved disappearance of a lady agent in the 80's, this play perfectly translates the loose landscape of suspicions, guesses, a strong feel that something horrible is about to happen, but one cannot grasp - what.

Clair is the only heartwarming person in this play. The world around her is somewhat weird.

A married couple, Mike (Arkia Ashraf) and Liz (Talia Benatar), owners of the house for sale, enjoy each other a lot, leaving a crying child with a nanny, an Italian girl Anna (Jade Fuda), who can hardly speak English. They all make an impression of a caricature. Mike and Liz are too loud, too keen to get their cash, so the ethics Clair is pushing form, is slowly rusting away, contaminated by greed.

Anna, even not speaking the language well, certainly feels badly hidden humiliation - the tone, jokes, the room give to her (which was bargained as a bonus - rarely available fourth bedroom, no windows but good size). Her minimal talking and dead stare look beaming with refusal of any connection or compassion, but deep indifference and disdain.

Once Clair is ready to seal a deal, a stranger comes in, a mysterious buyer, James (Daniel Fletcher), ready to pay the overfloated price in cash.

Every single character (including three played by Bayley Prendergast) is crystal clear, sharp and nuanced, working perfectly as an ensemble.

What could be quite ordinary becomes a cleverly directed, creepy, blood-chilling chain of scenes when one cannot see anything wrong at first but can clearly sense it.

The great feature - and perfectly used - structure of conversations. There is not much happening as such; mise-en-scènes are mostly static, but the variation in tones, slipping mismatching statements off a tongue, loudness or softness of the voices accompanied by cold, sterile shades of lighting and rich soundscape - that is what builds up the feel of uneasiness and disturbance. At some point, the world feels like a surreal, zombie country.

It is a graphical, intellectual type of work, where one episode is coldly logical followed by another, underlined by something disturbing. It is full of sharp edges, snappy dialogues, intentionally incomplete scenes, shaped into a non-trivial theatre experience where the masterful work of five actors leaves you unsettled, angry for not being able to help, and full of compassion. The latter, perhaps, may find its use for someone outside the stage walls.