Fair Play

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).

This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Bush Theatre, London, in December 2021

Ella Road is a writer and actor from London. Her first play The Phlebotomist premiered at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs in Spring 2018, and transferred to the Main House in Spring 2019. The play was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate theatre, and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Ella was a Soho Theatre Young Writer 2017/18, one of the Bush Theatre’s Emerging Writers 2018/19, and was on the BBC Drama Writers Programme 2019/20.