Blood and sweat drip to the floor. Tears are on their way. In a small room in Edinburgh, Megan Tomei is cleat-clipped into a stationary bike, yelling above the music as she leads a high-intensity spin class gone wrong. \u201cWe take the thing you\u2019re running from,\u201d Tomei shouts, pink lights bouncing off her gleaming shoulders, \u201cand turn it into fuel!\u201d This is SpinQueen\u2122, one of a handful of shows at this year\u2019s fringe demanding epic endurance from their performers through the use of jazzed-up gym equipment. Employing various bikes and a treadmill to authentically illustrate the struggle for success, the pain of failure, and the escape from reality, a profoundly fit group of actors are pushing themselves to their physical limits.<\/p>\n
Across the city, Connor Delves\u2019s calves are worth watching. The workout from his cycling-obsessed play, Cadel: Lungs on Legs<\/a>, is so powerful that people have come up to him after, wanting to touch them. \u201cTo make sure they\u2019re real,\u201d says Delves, who cycles a whopping 27km per show. Does he mind this attention? He shrugs. \u201cIf they\u2019re OK with getting their hands sweaty, go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markYou\u2019re watching it cost me something. You\u2019re watching this body really work<\/p>\n Delves grew up in his parents\u2019 bike shop in Perth, Western Australia. His mum was a triathlete, his dad an international mountain-biker. \u201cIt\u2019s always been acting and sport for me,\u201d he says. When he was replaced by a bigger name in a transferring show, he decided to make a production in which he was irreplaceable. \u201cI\u2019d never seen a play that showed endurance sport at its best,\u201d he says, \u201cwhere the sport is an actual effort.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2016, Baby Reindeer\u2019s Richard Gadd won the Edinburgh comedy award for Monkey See Monkey Do<\/a>, an exposing show about toxic masculinity and sexual assault, performed on a treadmill. Two decades before, performance artist Kim Noble pounded away on a treadmill while the other half of their double act<\/a>, Stuart Silver, played chess against the audience. Over lockdown, Katie Mitchell created eco-theatre show A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction<\/a>, with cyclists generating the show\u2019s lights and sound. But few shows that involve this kind of equipment are about sport, where the exercise is in the story as well as in the doing.<\/p>\n Hero\u2019s arc \u2026 Connor Delves in Cadel: Lungs on Legs. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n With Cadel, this is what Delves set out to do. The result is a sincere, leg-burning ode to Cadel Evans<\/a>, the first Aussie to win the Tour de France. Delves performs on a series of the real bikes that Evans used to win the 2011 race, clamped in place. The operation is a family affair: Delves\u2019s father is the show\u2019s mechanic. Head down, Delves\u2019s teardrop-shaped helmet is steady as his legs whir round for the sprint stages. Remarkably riding the same mountain gradients as they do in the Tour, Delves is adept at explaining clearly to the uninitiated how the race works. It\u2019s evident just how tough it is: every stage, every day, every kilometre. \u201cIt means you\u2019ve got to think about nutrition,\u201d Delves says of his show. \u201cAbout sleep.\u201d He quit drinking to train for it. \u201cIt means treating acting like being an athlete.\u201d<\/p>\n While Evans\u2019s story is the hero\u2019s arc, The Distance is about the also-rans. \u201cI\u2019m interested in what happens to the legions of sportspeople who are very, very good, but not good enough to make a living from it,\u201d says Ben Norris, the show\u2019s writer and performer, and vocally recognisable as farmer\u2019s son Ben in The Archers. \u201cFor every one who wins the Olympics,\u201d he says, \u201cthere are at least eight who lose the final. Then 100 or 200 who were in the heats. Then tens of thousands who are very good but don\u2019t get there.\u201d So, he asks, what happens then? \u201cWho are you when the thing to which your identity has been shackled is no longer viable?\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI\u2019ve had to start behaving like I\u2019m an elite athlete again<\/p>\n Norris plays Chris, a young boy realising his potential as a cross-country runner and dreaming of competing in the Olympics. The Distance is inspired by Norris\u2019s time as a teenage international long-distance runner, but he worked hard to extricate it from himself. When he was mentored by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, she told him: \u201cBe less concerned with being likable.\u201d During each show, he runs roughly 8km on a \u201cgeriatric, old, foldable treadmill\u201d that he\u2019s wheeled all over the country. \u201cOne time, a local MP helped me on to the train with it,\u201d he says. In Edinburgh, on Summerhall\u2019s main stage, the treadmill is surrounded by a scaffolding pole, which Norris nimbly clambers over as Chris\u2019s success rises and rises \u2013 and then begins to fall.<\/p>\n Norris starts running as the audience file into the room. Soon, his clothes are drenched. As he strips down, we see the effort this is taking; his chest heaving, his body glistening. The sweat and ragged breath are important, he explains. \u201cYou\u2019re watching it cost something. You\u2019re watching this body really work.\u201d That cost is already making itself evident. Norris pulled his calf in March, then again in April. \u201cI\u2019ve had to start behaving like I\u2019m an elite athlete again, in terms of the rigour of my training and recovery,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not 18 any more. Everything takes longer on an older body.\u201d<\/p>\n To be fit enough for the show, he has been cross-training, doing strength and conditioning, and phoning friends while on the treadmill to practise speaking at the same time as running at a furious speed. Throughout the fringe, he\u2019s forcing himself to rest. \u201cI\u2019ve done a musical at the fringe and that requires a different kind of discipline. This will be like that, but on steroids.\u201d He frowns. \u201cAlthough crucially,\u201d he says, \u201cnot on steroids.\u201d His one request for accommodation: could he please have a bath?<\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019m not 18 any more!\u2019 \u2026 Ben Norris in The Distance. Photograph: Mihaela Bodlovic<\/p>\n I want to get a sense of the effort demanded by these shows, so when I talk to Tomei, the creator and performer of SpinQueen\u2122, before the fringe, I suggest we do it on exercise bikes. My thighs soon regret it. \u201cOh God,\u201d says Tomei, halfway through our chat. \u201cI\u2019m sweating so much.\u201d She is in New York, calling from the spin studio at which she works. I quickly realise how hard it is to speak and ride at the same time.<\/p>\n In SpinQueen\u2122, Tomei plays a heightened, emotionally cracked version of herself as our manic spin instructor, spewing out \u201ctoxic positivity\u201d as Tomei calls it, her character obsessed with thinness, optimisation and escape from the quiet that lets thoughts seep in. \u201cKeep pushing, keep starving!\u201d she calls in the show with a too-wide grin. In real life, Tomei is similarly peppy, but without the desperate about-to-fall-apart energy of her character. But that version of herself isn\u2019t a world away, she says; the story\u2019s climax borrows from a traumatic experience she had with an ex. When our narrator won\u2019t allow herself to stop cycling, Tomei says: \u201cIt\u2019s a physical representation of her emotional state.\u201d<\/p>\n Running to survive \u2026 Richard Gadd won the Edinburgh comedy award for Monkey See Monkey Do in 2016. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Sweat is blurring my vision now. \u201cOh God, no, same,\u201d Tomei tries to reassure me. Every show, she cycles 16km, wanting people to feel the pain her character goes through, emotionally and physically. Tomei started taking spin classes with her dad in high school, and began teaching it as a way to earn money alongside acting. But after running the New York marathon, she got injured. \u201cI had to slow down for the first time in my life,\u201d she says. \u201cI struggled with it, and it made me think of all the standards we hold ourselves to, because of what we think makes us better or successful. It made me think: \u2018Why are we killing ourselves trying to reach this standard that can\u2019t be met?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n What happens if these performers fall or twist an ankle during the fringe? \u201cThe same thing as in the Tour de France,\u201d Delves says frankly. \u201cI think that\u2019s part of the allure of this. There\u2019s no understudy.\u201d With her massage gun packed, Tomei is more conscious of the emotional health she needs to maintain across the festival. \u201cEvery performance, I\u2019m reliving what happened to me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a high-intensity emotional workout too.\u201d<\/p>\n Even when their characters near the dreamed-of success in these shows, failure is only a breath away. One fall, one second behind in a race, one last chance. These plays capture the itch of pushing just that tiny bit harder, as well as the dangers of running on empty. \u201cThere\u2019s a little ambition monster within you,\u201d Norris says, \u201cthat will wonder if you should just quit everything else and give this one last big go.\u201d You can keep batting it down, he says, but the monster is persistent. \u201cLA Olympics 2028?\u201d Norris muses, only just joking. \u201cIs it too late?\u201d<\/p>\n SpinQueen\u2122<\/a> is at Jade Studio at Greenside @ George Street, until 29 August. The Distance<\/a>, Main Hall at Summerhall, until 31 August. Cadel: Lungs on Legs<\/a>, Auditorium at Gilded Balloon at the Museum, until 30 August; then Riverside Studios<\/a>, London, 13 October-15 November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blood and sweat drip to the floor. Tears are on their way. 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