Thermodrama at Edinburgh Fringe 2026: Sauna-Set Wellness Satire Comes to Summerhall
Thermodrama will run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026 at Summerhall’s Old Lab from Thursday 7 August to Monday 31 August, excluding 18 and 25 August. Performances take place at 22:30, with a running time of 60 minutes.
Following a sell-out Edinburgh run last summer, Lovelock Productions return to Summerhall with Thermodrama, a new play written by Coco Cottam and directed by Lydia Free. Set entirely inside a sauna, the show takes aim at wellness culture, self-optimisation, and the modern obsession with “living to live”.
The premise is deliciously tense: four people enter a sauna. Three walk out.
Thermodrama follows a group of strangers trapped in a sauna as the temperature continues to rise. At the centre of the story are two estranged sisters, Soph and Jen. Soph has not slept in weeks. Jen may have just hit someone with her car. Their already fragile reunion is interrupted by Pete, an evangelical gym enthusiast, before things take an even darker turn with the arrival of Shane, the cyclist Jen may have hit.
As the heat builds, so does the pressure. What begins as a wellness space becomes something much more unsettling: a boiling room full of guilt, fear, self-help language, revenge, and people who absolutely should not be left alone together in swimwear.
The cast includes Izzy Lever, Camilla Anvar, Luke Nixon and Matty Loane. The creative team includes writer and producer Coco Cottam, director and producer Lydia Free, associate producer James Newbery, lighting designer James Levy, sound designer Ice Dob and set designer Carmen Neat.
The show explores how wellness culture can become quietly sinister, especially when sold to ordinary people trying to improve difficult, precarious lives. Rather than focusing on ultra-rich biohackers or luxury retreat regulars, Thermodrama looks at people who are vulnerable to the promise that they can fix themselves if they simply try hard enough, buy the right thing, breathe correctly, sweat properly, and become a shinier, calmer, more optimised version of themselves.
Writer Coco Cottam describes the sauna as the perfect place to interrogate that journey: four people sitting in a hot room, waiting to improve. But what happens if no one gets better? What if everyone gets worse?
Grace Says…
Now then, I do love a Fringe show that sounds like it might make you laugh, sweat, panic and reconsider every scented candle you’ve ever bought. Thermodrama has that properly late-night Edinburgh feel to it: strange, claustrophobic, funny, a bit feral, and probably not what your wellness app had in mind when it told you to take time for yourself. A sauna full of secrets, rage and self-improvement gone wrong? Honestly, that sounds like my kind of relaxing evening.
Thermodrama plays Summerhall’s Old Lab at Edinburgh Fringe 2026 from 7 to 31 August, excluding 18 and 25 August. Performances are at 22:30. Tickets are priced at £17, with concessions available at £14.50 and previews at £10.
The show is recommended for ages 14+ and contains strong language and swearing.
Thermodrama
Summerhall, Old Lab
1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL
7–31 August 2026, excluding 18 and 25 August
22:30
Running time: 60 minutes
Thermodrama | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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