Spin Cycles: A hill to climb
Of course Jamie-Lee Money is on a stationary bike at the start of the show, it’s the premise of her one-hander, spelled out in the title: Spin Cycles.
For the rest of the 65-odd minutes, she spends suprisingly little time on it. Much of the play, which she also wrote, involves the backstory to her being on a bike, along with cuts to characters who help propel the narrative. These include the well-meaning but nosy woman on a plane, a male intern at her workplace, and charismatic leader of the spinning group which she joins with a healthy amount of skepticism, and only because it’s a work assignment. Each of these is played by Jamie-Lee Money with the instant character switches we expect from an accomplished actor. That she mocks them clues us to the fact that the main character, Lolly, is not a very nice person. It also results in, or is a result of, the humour being sardonic.
It also makes sympathy hard to find, particularly as we come to realise that Lolly’s cynicism is seems cultivated from a poisonous mixture of privilege and insecurity, which is essentially the two main ingredients of social media. If this character’s generation were plants, social media would be their potting soil. This is not explored, however.
Rather, we are led to believe that Lolly’s sour view of the world, failure to keep her shit together, and increasingly self-destructive behaviour are due to her to refusal to grieve. Jamie-Lee Money certainly has that right; grief will destroy you, one way or another, if you don’t go through the process of actually grieving. Which is hard. Like life. You have to do the work.
It’s just that the causes of Lolly’s falling apart are unconvincing. There is nothing extraordinary about the events she presents to us. Death of a grandparent, death of a friend, a parent’s illness – even if potentially terminal. Of course they are not easy, but they really are normal, and insufficient to premise an impending breakdown in any young adult with a modicum of resilience.
Which circles us back to the question: what in Lolly’s past makes her so vastly ill-equipped to deal with what amounts to pretty much the amount of loss to be expected in three decades of life? The play doesn’t go there.
The tragic death of a friend at that friend’s 21st birthday party is the one handle that could hold up the premise. It is the thing that sticks, and is haunting. But it is dropped; a dead end. Jamie-Lee Money leaves it still born in the script. Without that exploration, without it informing, perhaps, Lolly’s inability manage the difficult art of living, the only conclusion is the one we already intimated; in three decades she’s never had to do anything really hard. She’s spoilt and insecure. If this play was purely a song-and-dance-stroke-romantic comedy then we it could be viewed purely as entertaining. Which it is. But it aims for something more. “Spin Cycles gives a cathartic look into why we search for something deeper when the inconceivable happens to us,” reads the programme.
Outside the theatre, we’re seeing children being bombed in Gaza, the rise of fascism and the far right in Europe with its toxic racism veiled as anti-immigrant nationalism. We have Donald Trump employing the richest man in the world to stop life-giving aid to the poorest people in the world. In this context, the “inconceivable” presented to us in Spin Cycles elicits no empathetic response.
This is not to say Jamie-Lee Money should do a play about Palestine or the Ukraine or any number of absolutely terrible situations across the globe, or even at home, whether that be London or Cape Town. Not at all and god forbid. What is needed, if she is to touch that sympathetic nerve, to get us to access our own grief for deaths we’ve had to grieve, for deaths we can imagine, is to find her own vulnerability, go into it, and present it to us.
Which is not say we didn’t enjoy the play. Spin Cycles was slick, well-performed, has a great set, great lighting. A little slow in the first half or so, but it became quite fun. I can well imagine it went down well at the Edinburgh Fringe, especially with an audience a few beers in.
But to be great, and to meet the play’s premise, Jamie-Lee Money is going to have to move us, to bring forth laughter and tears that are unbidden. A slick and poised performance isn’t enough. We need honesty, in its raw form.
There were portals to this in the play, doors half opened then shut. Perhaps because what is in those rooms isn’t pretty. Like grief. But as the play itself points out, that uncomfortable, difficult place is where it needs to go.
Spin Cycles has been playing at The Baxter Golden Arrow Studio since 19 February. Tonight, 1 March, is the last show after a 2pm matinee. Book here.
Written and performed by Jamie-Lee Money, directed by Larica Schnell, with lighting design by Kieran McGregor. Photo by Claude Barnardo.