Written by Grace Hatchell, who is attempting to type this while pedalling on a spin bike and has already discovered that journalism and cardio should not be mixed without medical supervision.
Now then, some shows arrive in my satchel with a little jazz hands, a wink, and a ticket link. Some arrive smelling faintly of hairspray, ambition and panic. And then some arrive clipped into a spin bike, sweating through the lie that everything is fine.
SpinQueen™ sounds like one of those shows.
New Yorker Megan Tomei makes her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut this summer with the UK premiere of SpinQueen™, a darkly comic one-woman show set entirely on a stationary spin bike. Yes, entirely. On a spin bike. I’m exhausted already and I’ve only carried the press release from the sorting frame to the kettle.
The show runs at Jade Studio, Greenside @ George Street, from Friday 7 to Saturday 29 August at 19.35, with no performances on Sunday 16 or Sunday 23 August. The first press performance is Friday 7 August, which gives critics just enough time to stretch their calves and question every wellness advert they’ve ever believed.
Written and performed by Megan Tomei and directed by Jennesy Herrera, SpinQueen™ is described as an absurdist pedal through body image, abuse and the pressure to please. It is physically relentless, brutally funny and, by the sound of it, quietly devastating in the way only a show about “self-care” can be when it starts peeling back the pretty branding and reveals something much bloodier underneath.
At the centre of the piece is Meg, a woman trapped on a stationary spin bike she cannot unclip from. A standard fitness class begins to unravel into confession, confrontation and reckoning. She pedals through her need to please, her addictions, her eating disorder and the parts of herself she has spent years trying to outrun.
And isn’t that the cruel little trick of it? A spin bike looks like movement, but you don’t actually go anywhere. You sweat, you push, you obey the beat, you smile when told, you keep up with the room, and at the end you are still exactly where you started. Only sorer. Only more tired. Only wondering why everyone keeps calling this strength.
The story follows Meg after a violent, sleepless night with her abusive boyfriend, as she returns to work at her spin studio and attempts to carry on as normal. Because that is what the world often expects, isn’t it? Turn up. Tie your hair back. Smile brightly. Teach the class. Be inspiring. Be toned. Be digestible. Be the woman who has been through something but doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable by showing it.
It does not take long before the performance of control begins to crack. Meg’s version of self-care starts to reveal itself as self-destruction in better leggings. Throughout the show, she discovers that the only thing more exhausting than the workout is running from herself.
There is something painfully sharp about that. Because SpinQueen™ is not just taking aim at fitness culture in the easy, “ooh look, expensive smoothies” sort of way. It is going after something deeper: the way discipline can be praised even when it is hurting you, the way women are encouraged to shrink, polish, push, endure and still somehow look grateful for the privilege.
We are living in a world where “wellness” can become another job. Another costume. Another performance. Drink the water. Do the steps. Track the calories. Fix the face. Heal, but make it aesthetic. Rest, but not so much that you fall behind. Be empowered, but not messy. Be vulnerable, but not inconvenient. And if your life is falling apart, perhaps try a branded class package and a discount code.
Aye, because nothing says emotional recovery like being shouted at by a bike that goes nowhere.
But the humour here matters. SpinQueen™ is darkly comic, absurd and physically intense, using satire and direct audience engagement to pull audiences into Meg’s spiral. That blend of laughter and discomfort sounds right for a show like this. Sometimes the only way to look at something unbearable is sideways, through a joke that catches in your throat halfway through.
Tomei brings a fascinating background to the piece. She is an actor, writer and qualified SoulCycle instructor, which means SpinQueen™ is not just imagined from a distance. It comes from a body that knows the rhythm, the room, the performance, the pressure. It was created between late 2025 and early 2026, at a moment of personal and creative convergence for Tomei. After years navigating a long-running eating disorder and escaping an abusive relationship, she began to recognise how performance, control and physical endurance had shaped her sense of self-worth.
That is not light material. Nor should it be handled like a neat issue play with a tidy moral and a leaflet at the end. What makes SpinQueen™ intriguing is that it seems to understand how tangled these things are. Abuse, body image, addiction, ambition, discipline, desire, comedy, performance — none of them sit in separate little labelled boxes. They bleed into each other. They pedal in circles. They disguise themselves as progress.
Director Jennesy Herrera brings her own sharp lens to the production. A New York-born writer-director whose work reckons with a divided, image-driven society, Herrera directed and produced Cabin Pressure at the Center for Theatre Research in New York in 2025 and has also worked in film, including her short Cassie. With SpinQueen™, she helps shape a show that appears to ask not just what happens to Meg, but what kind of culture teaches her to survive by performing damage as discipline.
And then there is Tomei herself. New York, she says, makes up 95% of her personality, despite being bi-coastal, which I respect because Yorkshire makes up at least 87% of mine and the remaining 13% is tea. She studied acting at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the University of Southern California, trained at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and Stonestreet Studios, created her improvised YouTube web series I Tried, and worked as a SoulCycle instructor and professional stage manager while building her career as an actor and writer.
There is a proper theatrical grit in that. Not the shiny “overnight success” nonsense that makes everyone else feel like they’ve missed a train, but the real version: training, working, surviving, making, supporting yourself, falling apart, getting back on, and eventually turning the whole bruised, complicated thing into a show.
SpinQueen™ also arrives at Edinburgh with a trailer, press images, and the kind of premise that could easily be mistaken for a gimmick if you only glanced at it. A woman on a spin bike for 50 minutes? You might expect pure comedy, pure sweat, pure absurdity. But beneath that fixed wheel is something much more human: a woman trying to stop moving long enough to feel what has happened to her.
That, for me, is where the heartbeat of the show seems to sit.
Because sometimes the bravest thing is not pushing harder. Sometimes it is unclipping. Sometimes it is refusing the next command. Sometimes it is saying, “Actually, no, I am not fine,” even if the lights are up, the music is pounding and everyone expects you to keep smiling.
SpinQueen™ sounds funny, fierce and raw. It sounds like a show with aching legs and a bruised soul. It sounds like a comedy that knows exactly when to let the laughter drop. And it sounds like the sort of Edinburgh debut that may begin with a fitness class but ends somewhere far more intimate: with a woman finally facing herself.
Grace’s verdict from the sorting office?
I’ll not be joining the class, thank you very much. I once tried a spin bike and spent the next day walking like I’d offended a staircase. But I would absolutely pull up a theatre seat for this.
Because SpinQueen™ does not sound like a show about exercise.
It sounds like a show about survival.
SpinQueen™ runs at Jade Studio, Greenside @ George Street, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 22-26 George Street, EH2 2PQ, from Friday 7 to Saturday 29 August, with no shows on Sunday 16 or Sunday 23 August. Performances are at 19.35. Tickets are £15, with £10 concessions. The show has an age guidance of 12+ and a running time of 50 minutes.
More information is available via Megan Tomei’s website and the Edinburgh Fringe ticket listing.
SpinQueen™ | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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