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Written by Martin Crimp. The Company Theatre. The Old Fitz. 22 Jul – 3 Aug, 2025.

If you’re a fan of the challenging, conceptual work of Caryl Churchill or Sarah Kane, then make your way to The Old Fitz for this late-night treat. Martin Crimp’s triptych of stories about stories is woven seamlessly together in director Harry Reid’s new production. It offers no new answers to the play’s questions but presents them with exhilarating conviction.

In Reid’s interpretation, three (or is it four?) cleaners invent stories about the world around them as they work. In the first, Whole Blue Sky, a stray scarf sparks an improvised tale of a young woman who may (or may not) have the perfect marriage. Together, the storytellers develop and correct each other’s versions as they go—but the story reveals more about the teller than the subjects, taking darker turns along the way. In the second, Face to the Wall, they imagine a school shooting from the shooter’s point of view—someone who, on the surface, seems to have the perfect life (could he be the husband or father from the first story? Possibly). In the third, the short Fewer Emergencies, the storytellers glimpse a flicker of hope, whether real or imagined, in the distance.

This is the first piece of genuine “lean-in” theatre I’ve seen in a while, and despite the lateness of the hour, it gripped me completely. Crimp’s ambiguity invites the audience to create their own narrative, sharing a sense of personal responsibility for the direction the story takes. It’s manipulative and more than a little cruel—but thrilling all the same. Just as Beckett’s Happy Days (recently performed at Sydney Theatre Co) places us in an existential space to focus on the characters and their humanity, Crimp’s stories expose the inner workings of the storytellers and their own violent impulses. By compelling us to imagine the visuals ourselves, we experience a fully immersive virtual memory. This is storytelling at its most disturbing.

The Company Theatre provides an extra layer of context through the cast’s costumes and actions, gently guiding us into the world rather than leaving us in a purely conceptual space (when Fewer Emergencies premiered in 2005, it was staged in an all-white room with the cast seated around a table). I’m sure some purists will object, but I found it to be additive. There’s a reassuring confidence in the cast’s performances too—they seem to know where we’re headed, even if we do not, which lets us sit back and immerse ourselves more fully.

The cast of four—Clay Crighton, Olivia Hall-Smith, Bayley Prendergast, and Monica Sayers—are all exceptional. With such a conceptual script, it would be easy for their characters to feel cold or detached, but instead, each is vibrantly alive. Telling these stories seems to be their great joy, and that enthusiasm, however twisted or macabre, holds us enthralled.

As part of The Old Fitz’s late-night programme, Fewer Emergencies takes place on the same basic set as the main show, Betrayal, which is completely transformed with the addition of some props and rich lighting by Izzy Morrissey, whose work does much of the visual storytelling.

But fear not—Fewer Emergencies isn’t nearly as disturbing as some might suggest. It feels like watching an unsettling yet wildly entertaining episode of Black Mirror, rather than enduring a Saw movie.

Frankly, this is fantastic work. Experience it alongside Betrayal, and you’ve got a double bill of the highest calibre.

Written by Harold Pinter. Sport For Jove. Old Fitz Theatre. 18 Jul – 10 Aug, 2025.

Sport For Jove’s production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal peels back layer after layer of relationships and asks us: who can you really trust?

Emma (Ella Scott Lynch) and Jerry (Matt Hardie) meet in a pub after a few years apart. They catch up on their respective families like the old lovers they are. Emma reveals that she has just told her husband Robert (Andrew Cutcliffe) about their past affair. From this moment, a complex web of deceit unfolds as each scene takes us further back into their shared history, showing lies piling up over the years.

Does a lie hurt if it is never discovered? Emma, Jerry and Robert have been lying to each other for years. The question of who knows what, and when, drives this mannered comedy of revelations. Betrayal is funny—partly because the script’s major surprises catch us off guard, and partly because Pinter’s rhythms are so familiar they verge on self-parody.

Pinter’s cold, compassionless menace is best captured by Cutcliffe’s Robert, who seems more interested in squash and poetry than in his wife’s wellbeing. You’re left wondering where polite British reserve ends and genuine indifference begins. It’s a performance told largely through subtext—brilliant to watch. In contrast, Lynch’s Emma appears to be constantly questioning her decisions, on the verge of changing her mind at any moment, while Hardie’s Jerry moves from warm reserve at the play’s start (the end of their relationship) to reckless abandon. This emotional “three-body problem” feels inevitably destined for chaos.

Director Cristabel Sved strips the production down to near black-box simplicity. Melanie Liertz’s set design threatens to bring back the vertical blind to theatre stages in a way I haven’t seen since the 1990s (kudos to Diego Retamales, who turns opening and closing them into an art form). Lighting by Verity Hampson and Luna Ng subtly shifts the tone, transporting us from Kilburn in West London to Venice. As the play progresses, the stage becomes cluttered with the detritus of the characters’ interactions—what starts pristine ends in disorder.

Reverse chronologies can be tricky (just ask the late Stephen Sondheim). As the play unfolds, we already know the ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘what’ and ‘where’ of events; what remains unknown is the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of their relationships. The drama doesn’t lie in what happens but leaps out in the small lies that are told.

The audience must stay attuned to the micro-moments that make a Pinter play truly sing—though some are not always easy to catch. With a script full of wickedly ambiguous lines that can cut deep and an emotional tension that simmers beneath the surface, some scenes occasionally feel blunt and out of step with the characters.

Betrayal is one of my favourite Pinter plays, even more than the much-lauded The Caretaker, and it’s a joy to see it brought to life in such an intimate space. This is a real “actors’ play”, offering plenty for the performers to savour. It’s all about character, and this cast clearly revels in it. The show is very good now, and I suspect it will deepen further over the course of the run.