‘The newest addition to the sauna thriller genre, this show makes more than just your palms sweat.’
Sauna culture is on full display at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, and Summerhall Arts seems to be its major programmer. Perhaps, as Thermodrama – a new play by Lovelock Productions – makes clear, it’s because the sauna naturally makes for some pretty intense drama about our pretty intense fixation on wellness.
Playwright Coco Cottam peels back the veneer on cultures of self-care and self-optimization in this one-hour thriller schvitz at a leisure centre sauna. Pete – played brilliantly by Matty Loane – is deeply intense, longevity-fixated, and such a regular sauna goer, he seems like an appendage of the set sometimes. He’s the first character we meet, and what seems, at first, like a particularly zen leisure centre dude quickly transforms into a haunting self-optimization freak, cracking out quick and animal-like reps on the benches. Of course, as soon as someone enters the sauna, Pete takes his seat on the bench again, the image of normal. His performance is mesmerizing and everything the play needs to ground its central exploration of a wellness-obsessed apocalypse.
Pete’s routine is interrupted by the arrival of two estranged sisters, Soph (Camilla Anvar) and Jen (Izzy Lever), whose Fleebag-like bickering seems to reset the energy completely and set the stage for some enjoyably unpredictable drama. It’s clear from the start that Cottam’s writing is slick – the dialogue is tight, quick, and easy to follow, even when a lot is going on (and, boy, is there a lot going on in this little sauna). The characters are written simply, in a way that highlights their ordinary lives and juxtaposes them nicely with the extremes of the events within the sauna. It also makes them incredibly relatable and drives home the play’s overall exploration of the ways fixations with longevity and self-optimization are ordinary people’s responses to an increasingly hellish world.
Director Lydia Free has also obviously given a tremendous deal of thought to establishing the atmosphere of this play, and it pays off. Even though some elements of the plot seem a bit far-fetched (I’m still wondering about the carrots) and some threads left jarringly untied (it seems a bit unfair that the play ends with a dead body on the sauna floor and virtually all personal consequences unexplored), the acting, direction, and design work together to keep Thermodrama cooking to its conclusion.
This will be some of the best-acted work you’ll see at the Fringe this year. It will also make you think twice about using the sauna in the bowels of your local leisure centre. Sweat at your own risk.
Show Listing: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/thermodrama
LISTINGS INFORMATION:
Venue: Old Lab, Summerhall
Dates: 6-30th Aug (excl. 18th and 25th)
Times: 22:30
Ticket prices: £18.50/ concession: £16.00
Fringe box office: 0131 226 0000 / www.edfringe.com
Suitable for 14+