If you’ve ever watched elite sport and felt your stomach twist – not just from the thrill of the race, but from the politics, pressure, and power lurking beneath it – Fair Play is about to hit you right where it hurts (in the best possible way).
This March, Lost Thought brings the Australian Premiere of Fair Play by acclaimed British playwright Ella Road (The Phlebotomist) to the Old Fitz Theatre, and it’s shaping up to be one of the most urgent, pulse-racing pieces of theatre you’ll see all year. Think sweat, speed, teenage ambition, and a moral finish line that keeps moving just out of reach.
Two athletes. One friendship. A system that refuses to stay neutral.
Fair Play is a blistering two-hander set in the unforgiving world of competitive middle-distance running. At its heart are Ann and Sophie, two teenage athletes who train, race, and grow up together – sharing early mornings, burning lungs, private jokes, and the kind of friendship forged through shared pain and dreams of greatness.
But as success arrives, so does scrutiny. As institutions step in to define what “fairness” looks like, the rules of the race begin to shift. Suddenly, the girls are no longer just running against competitors – they’re running against systems that claim neutrality while wielding enormous power over their bodies, identities, and futures.
This is not a tidy sports drama with a triumphant podium moment at the end. Fair Play asks the harder questions: Who gets to decide what a level playing field really is? And what – or who – gets sacrificed in the name of winning?
Theatre that moves like an athlete
Directed by Emma Whitehead, this Australian Premiere fuses rapid-fire dialogue with muscular physical storytelling. Whitehead is known for bold, actor-driven work that interrogates power, identity, and the body – and Fair Play sits right in her wheelhouse.
Her approach balances propulsive athletic energy with emotional precision, ensuring the play never becomes a lecture. Instead, it lands in your body first – breathless, visceral, alive – before catching up with your brain later. You’ll feel the strain in the muscles, the rush of competition, the quiet devastation of betrayal, and the warmth of a friendship that desperately wants to survive.
As Whitehead herself puts it:
“Fair Play is a play about bodies under pressure – from sport, from systems, from expectations. What drew me to it was the way Ella Road refuses easy answers and instead asks us to sit inside contradiction: fairness versus harm, ambition versus care.”
Why Fair Play feels so urgent right now
Ella Road’s writing is razor-sharp, compassionate, and unafraid to sit in discomfort. Drawing on real-world debates around eligibility, gender, race, and bodily autonomy in sport, Fair Play never simplifies its politics. Instead, it trusts the audience to think – and to feel – deeply.
This is a coming-of-age story that refuses nostalgia. It’s about teenage girls pushed to be exceptional in a world that monitors, measures, and judges them relentlessly. It’s about institutions that claim objectivity while enforcing deeply human – and deeply flawed – decisions. And it’s about how friendship can fracture under pressure, even when love and loyalty remain.
Whitehead describes the play as “razor-sharp and deeply compassionate,” and that balance is what makes Fair Play so powerful. You won’t leave with neat answers, but you will leave changed – questioning what fairness really means, and who it truly serves.
A powerhouse creative team
Lost Thought, the producing company behind the production, has built a reputation for rigorous, intimate theatre that embraces uncertainty and trusts audiences to think for themselves. Their work has been praised for its vigour, nuance, and emotional authenticity – qualities that feel perfectly matched to Fair Play.
The cast features Rachel Crossan and Elodie Westhoff, whose performances promise to capture both the ferocity of elite athletes and the vulnerability of young women navigating impossible expectations. Supported by a stellar creative team – including choreographer Cassidy McDermott-Smith, lighting designer EJ Zielinski, and sound designers Mitch Brown and Osibi Akerejola – this production is as technically dynamic as it is emotionally gripping.
Every element works together to place you on the track, inside the race, and uncomfortably close to the decisions being made about these bodies in motion.
Why you should see it (even if you “don’t like sport”)
Here’s the thing: Fair Play isn’t really about sport. Sport is just the pressure cooker.
This is a play about ambition, about friendship under strain, about who gets protected and who gets policed. It’s about growing up in systems that promise fairness but rarely deliver it equally. And it’s about the terrifying moment when winning stops feeling worth the cost – but quitting feels even worse.
Whether you’re a theatre lover, a sports fan, or someone who’s ever felt the weight of expectations pressing in on your body or identity, Fair Play will speak to you.
There’s no finish line here – just a question that lingers long after the lights go down.
The details you need
FAIR PLAY by Ella Road
Old Fitz Theatre
06 – 21 March 2026
7pm | Sat 2pm | Sun 5pm
100 minutes (no interval)
Suitability: 14+
If you like theatre that’s urgent, physical, emotionally raw, and politically alive – don’t miss this one. Fair Play isn’t here to reassure you. It’s here to make you think, feel, and question what we’re really running towards.