Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Jul 10 – 25, 2026
Playwright: Martin Crimp
Director: Harry Reid
Cast: Arkia Ashraf, Bayley Prendergast, Daniel Fletcher, Jade Fuda, Olivia Hall-Smith, Talia Benatar
Images by Robert Miniter

Theatre review
It is 1986, and Clair is an ambitious young woman navigating London’s cutthroat real estate market, hell-bent on carving out a better life for herself. While showing a property, she encounters James, a man of apparent means who claims he is ready to buy—yet something about him lingers just beyond the edge of trust. Martin Crimp’s Dealing with Clair is rooted in a true story that once dominated British headlines, written for an audience who lived through its cultural aftershocks. Four decades later, and half a world away, the play still coheres for audiences who know nothing of the original scandal, though many of its finer social nuances inevitably fade in transit.

Director Harry Reid renders the central narrative lucid and gripping; the psychological chess match between Clair and James remains genuinely compelling. It is the surrounding scenes, however, that falter. Supporting characters appear designed to refract the social climate of the era, yet much of that commentary dissipates before it can land.

Daniel Fletcher delivers a superbly cunning James, skirting the line between earnest charm and quiet menace to create a villain who is both repellent and comprehensible. We despise him, yet we fully understand how Clair could be so thoroughly undone. Opposite him, Olivia Hall-Smith gives Clair a bright, infectious gregariousness that makes her ambition visible and visceral; we see the hunger for success that drives her to take reckless risks. Hall-Smith also threads a subtle innocence through the performance, a quiet suggestion of how modern capitalism preys upon the young, extracting sacrifices they could never have imagined.

Visually, the production is modest but serviceable. Soham Apte’s set is nimble and efficient, shifting locations without the drag of scene changes. Larisha Dowson-Taylor’s costumes largely succeed in transporting us back in time, though the supporting cast could use sharper visual signifiers to clarify who they represent within social dynamics of the time. Izzy Morrissey’s lighting deftly pivots between naturalism and heightened drama, lending the production an occasional, welcome jolt of theatrical intensity. The sound design, credited to Reid, is notably spare; a more aggressive sonic landscape would have done much to amplify the tension inherent in this disturbing tale.

Forty years on, one might hope that workplaces have grown safer for women, yet the truth is that most professional environments were built by and for men. We have spent decades retrofitting these spaces to accommodate broader participation, but we remain trapped in the architecture of an unjust foundation. Problems will continue to surface, and we will be forced to address each new iteration as it arises—because tearing it all down and starting over, it seems, remains beyond our reach.

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