Spin Cycles review

There’s a strange but simple idea at the heart of Jamie-Lee Money’s debut play: an examination of grief through the medium of a spin class. Money, who also performs the monologue, spends most of it on a spin bike, remaining astonishingly composed while spin-exercising and talking.

She plays a cynical, not very likeable writer for a wellness website, reviewing products such as air fryers. Her even less likeable boss asks her to review a new spin class while also incorporating into the article her grief at her mother’s cancer diagnosis. She’s a slightly distancing character who disdains the people around her - the rich, Sweaty Betty-clad wellness huns - but sort of becomes the same as them.

Money’s messages are many, from the cultishness of spin classes with their overenthusiastic instructors to the dubious ethics of wellness content to (most importantly) the importance of regular breast check-ups, but these strands remain disparate.

Still, there’s good stuff about the character’s changed relationship with her body, particularly her breasts, in the wake of her mother’s cancer, as well as the way her grief has a push-and-pull effect, manifesting in excessive drinking in one moment and an overzealous commitment to spinning in another moment.

It’s a solid debut as a piece of writing, at its best in the way Money shows that processing grief and suppressing it can often look the same.