EdFringe Review: Spin Cycle

A hum of fluorescent light and the steady, rhythmic thrum of industrial washing machines frame the opening beats of Zofia Zerphy’s Spin Cycle. On its surface, the setup promises a lively, relatable comedy. Two women collide in a late-night laundrette, grappling with a stubborn machine door and trading quick-witted banter over an errant piece of clothing in a sequence of physical mishaps that carry shades of a sitcom skit.

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Kitt, a vibrant, inquisitive Irish artist radiating an unpredictable energy, finds an immediate counterpart in Noel, a sculptor, less self-assured but clearly charmed. For the first twenty minutes, Zerphy’s writing glides on brisk comic timing and sharp observation, capturing the cautious flirting and instant intimacy of two strangers feeling out the contours of an unexpected spark. Do they seem a little quick to fall into probing, meaningful chat? Maybe that’s just nature in action…or maybe not.

For beneath the easy warmth of this chance encounter lies something far more unsettling, even a little sinister. What begins as a somewhat conventional romantic comedy gradually warps into a claustrophobic psychological maze as the early comedy fades away, revealing deeper and totally unexpected philosophical questions.

Details fail to align. Noel reveals some unexplainable foreknowledge of Kitt’s personal history, while Kitt suffers from receding amnesia in response. As the truth of their prior interactions comes to light, Zerphy probes the ease with which people forget the bad, pine for the good, and write their own self-serving myths about past relationships. The mundane fifty-minute wash cycle transforms into a purgatorial holding room where memories of past lovers and suppressed grief cycle endlessly through the drum.

Agitation and Residual Stains

Director Bethan Rose orchestrates this tonal slide with rigorous control, allowing the production’s atmospheric design to heighten the sense of spatial disorientation. The set, festooned with hanging lines of pale, fluttering garments, casts shadows across the playing area, while the subterranean pulse of the washing machines provides a low, continuous bassline to the spoken dialogue.

Zerphy and Rhiannon Bell maintain a compelling, high-wire friction, displaying the ready chemistry of performers who share a natural rapport refined by plenty of practice. Bell brings a defensive, aching weight to Noel, weaponising her character’s working-class pride while laying bare the lingering damage of familial rejection of their queer identity. Zerphy, performing her own script with volatile precision, renders Kitt’s memory loss not as a theatrical gimmick, but as an active struggle to maintain a coherent sense of self. Maybe she can’t, the play seems to suggest, keep Noel in her heart and carry on with her life.

The production does occasionally stumble against its own narrative obscurity. The internal logic governing the shifting reality of the space can feel opaque, leaving crucial narrative pivots frustratingly out of reach for the audience. Yet even when this structural scaffolding wavers, the central partnership holds the piece together. Zerphy’s writing ultimately succeeds because it refuses to reduce grief to a simple equation, recognising that emotional recovery operates less like a straight line and more like an agitator drum, churning up buried hurts and lost dreams, until the cycle ends…and repeats.

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