REVIEW: Centred On Young Elite Athletes, FAIR PLAY Explores Much More Than Rigours Of Competitive Sports And The Challenges Of Youth.
FAIR PLAY
By: Jade Kops Mar. 09, 2026
Sunday 8th March 2026, 5pm, Old Fitz Theatre Woolloomooloo
Ella Road’s FAIR PLAY challenges the structure and rules around womens sports and what defines a woman through the relationship between two young athletes from vastly different backgrounds. First presented in 2021 in London, Director Emma Whitehead presents the work on the intimate Old Fitz Theatre stage for its Australian Premiere.
On face value FAIR PLAY is about Sophie (Elodie Westhoff) and Ann (Rachel Crossan), two athletes navigating their final years at school and, more importantly, sharing a goal to represent Great Britain in the 800m track event at the Olympics. Sophie, a lean Anglo-Saxon from an affluent part of London, is well known as one of the rising stars of the athletic competitions, so much so that she’s already secured a sponsorship, but in terms of academics, both she and her mother doesn’t seem to care about grades. Ann a more muscular girl of Nigerian descent who lives with somewhere in West London, at least a bus ride away from the Athletics club, juggles her training schedule with going to church on Sunday, making sure she’s home for family meals, and maintaining top grades in her schoolwork. Once Ann cracks through Sophie’s arrogant attitude the two become friends, supporting each other along the gruelling path to gold, navigating the normal challenges of being teenage girls until something that no one could control sideswipes them and tests that bond and challenges the ideas of how people are ‘categorised’. 
While the story spans a number of months and takes the girls from their club grounds to specialist training camps and competitions, Director Emma Whitehead lets Road’s dialogue indicate location as the work all takes place on Kate Beere’s (Production Designer) blue stage. Drawing on images of specialist running tracks with permanent lines preset in the polyurethane, two lanes are marked on a curved segment of wall while the other wall remains a solid blue and angular. The only visual change coming from projections of digital lap clocks that highlight the records that dominate the girls’ lives. The costuming quickly asserts the characters socio economic difference, with Sophie in all branded gear, in keeping with the sponsorship deal while Ann originally only has branded footwear as the integral tool of her sport.
Westhoff and Crossan capture the energy and essence of the girls perfectly. Westhoff exudes an arrogance and competitiveness that is so often seen in girls that ‘have it all’ and believe they are superior to others while Crossan presents as an immediately likable outsider that before her backstory is presented its clear she’s had more challenges to get to where she is. Vocally they convey the difference in upbringing and attitude while physically they work through the performance with Cassidy McDermott Smith’s choreography that makes the 100 minute play a workout in itself. Whitehead has ensured that the girls growth through their friendship, particularly Sophie’s apparent evolution from entitled and self-centred, is clear so that the turning point and the shift in behaviour is even more devastating.
The heart of the story however is something much bigger than two girls making friends over a passion for sport. The turning point that highlights the inequities of how people are classified to be part of a category is the bigger issue. The imbalance of who controls the decisions on where the dividing lines are drawn are highlighted as both a gender and a race decision as metrics favour statistics from white people, failing to consider ethnicity may play a part in a human’s ‘make up’. It also highlights the disparity between how genders are treated with males unlikely to be subjected to the same scrutiny as women for doing the same sport.
FAIR PLAY is a powerful piece with a lot to consider and a lot to learn. Presented by two wonderful emerging artists, this is much more than a story about sports and therefore an important piece for all audiences.
Fair Play — THE OLD FITZ THEATRE
Photos: Robert Miniter
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