Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Thermodrama
Lovelock Productions
Genre: New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Summerhall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Sauna culture is a new form of social connection, replacing traditional alcohol-heavy spaces like pubs with wellness-focused community gatherings. Over an hour, Thermodrama explores the reactions of a group of four (mostly) strangers to getting hotter and hotter as they seek self-improvement.
Review
For anyone unfamiliar with sauna culture: ‘The UK has embraced sauna culture as a new form of social connection, replacing traditional alcohol-heavy spaces like pubs with wellness-focused community gatherings. Driven by a desire for screen-free communication, physical health benefits, and paired with cold-water swimming, public saunas have surged from dozens to hundreds nationwide’ (BBC Hampshire)
Thermodrama is a funny, sharply observed satire of this culture, staged within the confines of a single sauna, which being a Fringe venue at 22.30 feels very authentic despite the steam of the sauna being a stage effect.
Carmen Neat’s set design provides two sets of benches set at right angles with a sauna heater at the junction and a backdrop of a red semi-see through screen.
The play opens with Pete (Matty Loane) who dedicates his life to the pursuit of physical optimization, religiously visiting the gym (and sauna) and tracking his health stats. He doesn’t cope well with discussing anything but his health stats. He displays some pretty impressive fitness moves but as soon as someone else arrives, becomes a different character altogether, just an ordinary quiet guy sitting on a bench in the sauna. Loane’s performance is mesmerising – I’d challenge anyone to manage more than one of those one-armed, bench-assisted press-ups he pulls off with such ease. He has clearly worked hard on this role.
The interruption comes in the form of estranged half sisters, Soph (Camilla Anvar) and Jen (Aiyana Bartlett), bickering from the moment they arrive. Coco Cottam’s writing cracks along – often overlapping, even competing, yet never hard to follow, even when there’s a great deal going on in this small space. They are entirely convincing as siblings, disagreeing one moment, reassuring each other the next.
Soph, we learn, has been managing her own mental health struggles, and her flirtation with Pete unfolds strangely – neither really speaking to the other, both framing the exchange through manifestation and visualisation, tipping between flirtation and competition.
The climax, when it arrives in the form of the fourth sauna user, comes very quickly – the play might have built more slowly towards it, for greater jeopardy – and a few threads are left hanging, not least why Soph is so unsettled by the sight of a carrot. There’s certainly scope to extend this towards a fuller ninety-minute show.
A great piece of late night drama: sharp, strange, and very well performed.
