The clocks are set. The line is drawn. They’ve got a chance to be champions. But at what cost? 

When Ann joins Sophie’s running club she’s thrown into a world of regimented training and pure focus. The two girls couldn’t be more different, but soon their shared passion makes them inseparable – dreaming in lanes and lap-times, waking up picturing Olympic medals, each day stronger and faster… 

But set head to head in the run up to the World Championships, they find themselves and their friendship put to the ultimate test. As their relationships, their bodies, and their very identities are pulled into public scrutiny, does being exceptional come at too high a price? 

A gripping exploration of the underside of women’s athletics, Fair Play is the new work from Ella Road (The Phlebotomist) – “the most promising young playwright in Britain” (The Telegraph).

Reviews

★★★★★ 'A much ‘bigger' play than it at first looks, and a remarkable piece of theatre.'

Whats On Stage

★★★★★ 'Directed by Monique Touko and designed by Naomi Dawson, there is a searing rhythm to the evening that doesn’t let us look away for even a second.' 

North West End

★★★★ 'Fair Play throws us into the brutal ignorance and invasiveness of the way elite sport approaches gender, with results that disproportionately impact Black women.' 

★★★★ ‘Directed by Monique Touko, with scenes marked by little beeps of the starting line, the pace never drops.'

Guardian

★★★★ ‘Monique Touko’s kinetic production dishes out dialogue that moves as fast and as easily as the characters do on the track, sells us on their simultaneous friendship and rivalry and love and suspicion.'

Times

★★★★ 'Monique Touko’s tightly driven production, enclosed on both sides by a running track along which both girls pound up and down, punctures each short scene with fearsome workouts and a muscle shredding techno soundtrack. It’s fast paced and slow moving at the same time'

Telegraph

★★★★ 'Monique Touko’s dynamic and appropriately fast-paced direction does well to reflect this; moments bowl along with barely a breath between them.'

Evening Standard

★★★★ 'Via the evolution of a friendship strengthened by tough training and challenged by competition, it explores gender, biology, prejudice and privilege – and in Monique Touko's exhilarating production, it does it all with breathless, pulse-thumping, muscular dynamism.'

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