Review: Evocatively spinning and transcending family, dislocation and grief in Spin Cycles

Jamie-Lee Money is a South African theatre maker who lives in London. She has written and performs in Spin Cycles, a solo play which was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to enthusiastic reviews. Money has brought the hit play home and is presenting Spin Cycles in Cape Town at the Baxter from February 19 to March 1.

It has been a jam packed week at the theatre so apologies for the delayed review. Please note that the run ends on Saturday – March 1.

In Spin Cycles, Money uses the frame of Spinning classes (as in the gym) to unpack “grief, love, healing and everything in between”.

Spin Cycles is semi-autobiographical. Money has incorporated fictional elements which makes for a compelling narrative. We see a young woman who reluctantly takes on a work assignment for a website, to write about Spinning classes at a gym in London. This is not a gig which appeals to her and she tries to hide in what she thinks is the back row but everything at Spinning is on the same level and she cannot hide from the omniscient instructor who is like god and sees everything – physically and emotionally.

Money adroitly conjures up the cultish aspect of group exercise. It is religion. It is therapy. It is seductive. Physically cycling on stage, with vigour and energy, Money sweats through and processes what the character has had to deal with, as transplant, living away from home. I loved the scenes on the airplane. We get a palpable sense of leaving home (South Africa) and heading for a life, away from a support structure. It is very funny how Money evokes how strangers try and become your besties on the plane when all you want to do is disconnect and sink into your travel pillow.

In juxtaposition with the isolation of the long distance plane ride, Money deftly sets up the utter immersion in the Spinning studio. The community with its bright lights and music becomes a container for her to process the sense of dislocation, fear and anxiety that she felt on the plane. The instructor in Spin Cycles reminds me of a croupier at a casino, egging on patrons to place bets and keep going, no matter what. There is a lot to laugh at in this play and it is much needed release from the pain and grief and the sense of feeling helpless, far away from home.  The play has been lauded for its humour, sarcasm and wry ripostes but it is the poignancy of the story and the navigating of illness of those close to one, which deeply resonated with me. It goes beyond catharsis. This is a purging of grief and turmoil through sweat. I won’t plot spoil what is revealed in the narrative.

Money is an energetic and visceral performer. She nails accents and sings. Director Larica Schnell keeps the narrative constantly on the move. To circle back to the image of a casino, lighting by Kieran McGregor, conjures up for me the sense that the lights are always on in a gym as they are in a casino. Time becomes nebulous under the bright lights and music. In the Spinning studio, with the prompt to get on your bike, there is a transcendence beyond the challenges of life as one tunes out – or tunes in and processes and calibrates through one’s stuff. As a big fan of group exercise at the gym, I can relate at how one becomes wrapped in the landscape of the gym, where the lights are always bright and the music is loud and how within that, one dangles between being switched off into one’s issues and then acutely switched in – with everything heightened.  With its nuanced script – albeit a little too long – Spin Cycles goes beyond being a comedic spin on Spinning, gym and Lycra clad gym bunnies.

✳ Jamie-Lee Money in her solo comedic play, Spin Cycles, on in The Baxter Studio, Cape Town, February 19 to March 1, 2025. Pic: Claude Barnardo