‘It is a stress, yes, to deal, undeniably, to deal with people, yes, but
That
That
That is what I enjoy. That is what I’m good at, okay?’
Clair works in real estate.
Mike and Liz are selling.
James wants to buy.
He’ll only deal with Clair.
Martin Crimp’s play Dealing with Clair premiered in 1988 at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. This edition was published alongside a new production of the play at the Orange Tree, in October 2018, in a co-production with English Touring Theatre.
‘Ingenious… truly timeless… Crimp is brilliant at showing how language can camouflage people’s baser actions… a fiendishly clever play’
— Guardian
‘Without ever straying from the naturalistic and while often being extremely funny, Crimp exposes the couple’s evasions with the accuracy of a butterfly collector pinning down his specimens… a resonant and powerful play’
— WhatsOnStage
‘A bleakly amusing, incrementally disquieting drama… deploys a Pinter-esque enigma and abstraction to take on a culture of quick bucks and soulless transactions’
— Telegraph
‘A very darkly comic and contemporary story… a bleakly accurate social commentary that both amuses and disturbs’
— Broadway World
‘Chilly and clever, perceptive about the hollow language of greed and suburban conformism…. a disquieting experience’
— Evening Standard
‘Chilling stuff… zeroes in, with unnerving accuracy, on the deeply unlikeable aspects of ordinary people’
— The Times
‘A skilfully written, well-crafted exposition of the horrors just beneath the civilised surface of our lives; it is at once a delicious satire on yuppie moral and emotional bankruptcy and a bleak, black comedy thriller’
— Independent
