Fair Play

Anna Sokolova
Mar 17
4 min read

Old FItz Theatre 6 - 21 March 2026

Presented by Lost Thought

The review

This play is confounding when trying to define what it is about. It is an obvious story on the surface - two close girlfriends are spending life training, running. The aim is Europe, the World, Olympics. The main and only asset to get it all - their own bodies. Bodies that are overtrained, overused, often underfed, with all warning signs screamed by them being neglected. It is also about a bigger issue related to the competitiveness (here, of women) in big sports. There is a broad subject of diversity of physiology brought up too, touching on questions of doping, natural, unconventional deviations from the average norm, leveling everybody to the same standard. It is about intimate friendship and the fragility of it when poisoned by rivalry. And it is about a horrifying feeling of catastrophe when shoved mercilessly out.

“Fair play” brings all this together, and if at first, half of this work might feel a bit slow-paced, by then one is grateful for the space it marked, cleaned up, and shaped for the ending.

Sophie, a London-born girl (Elodie Westhoff @elodie.westhoff), and Ann, a girl with a Nigerian background (Rachel Crossan) - very different physiques but the same ambitions, met first on the track and keep coming there again and again. Their conversations are intertwined with clever choreography directed by Cassidy McDermott Smith - jumps, stretches, lunges, starts, finishes, slowing down and speeding up again.

Enduring training is the main tone of the play. Laconic set-up, flooded with deep blue, by Kate Beere, is the space edged with a wave-shaped wall that looks like running lines, but placed horizontally. Lighting, a sequence of spot-lights and flow of blue, green, white (by EJ Zielinski), accompanied by projections of timers (video design Aron Murray) and completed by a complex soundscape (by Mitchell Brown and Osibi Akerejola) stitched of music and whistles, made it clear that the track space is the only life space.

It is an unusually structured story. Instead of compressing the steady beginning part, here the choice is to build the atmosphere slowly. Training, life as a training, is a repeatable, exhausting process - and the audience is made to live through it to get the feel deeply and properly.

It is a world of big sports. Would the close friends be rivals? Obviously yes. Would one support the other - certainly, till the point they are on the same start line. Crossan and Westhoff’s acting reflects all these nuances superbly, keeping the physically intense performance throughout the play. Watching each other, talking about everything - from gossip, religion, parents, to intimate things, family stories, to dreams. Calmer and more content Ann and light, thin Soph, both competitive, both talented - they need each other. Their connection is genuine - how they hold hands, how they hug, how they grab one another’s arm. With that, the more confident Ann becomes, the more anxious Soph starts to feel.

There is a beautifully made, sharp, wordless scene, when Ann starts a race strong, and Soph cannot catch her breath, having something like a meltdown, that describes the inner, dark layer of their relationship. And then there is a moment closely followed, where one Soph’s word, said as breath out with solace: “relieve”, demarcates a point of no return for both of them. This turning moment, which means that Soph is back to the leading position, is easily the most heartbreaking and brutally honest in any story about vanishing friendship. The wish to win, to reclaim self-esteem, and - how lucky! - to have a decent explanation of the years of being second is a poisonous mixture.

Such a mixture brings itself to its bitter existence in any competitive sport, yet is hardly ever brought into the daylight to talk about.

This work calls to answer a rigid system of laws around enhancement drugs, which ignores natural, uncommon deviations in physiology. That is the subject I am not qualified to talk about. But searching for more information, talking to a sports doctor who consults world-level teams, I’ve discovered this: https://www.enhanced.com/, Enhanced Games, this year, in Las Vegas. Each competitor is under close medical control because the extra chemical push is allowed. Australian Olympic-winning swimmer, James Magnussen, is in. It is a very controversial event and the subject, but a clear indication that things are certainly developing. Is the world ready to take it - we'll see.