New Yorker Megan Tomei makes her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut - with the UK premiere of SpinQueen™

New Yorker Megan Tomei makes her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut – with the UK premiere of SpinQueen™

Peter Anderson
August 8, 2026

An absurdist pedal through body image, abuse and the pressure to please –
set entirely on a stationary spin bike

Trapped on a stationary spin bike she can’t unclip from, a woman pedals through her
need to please, her addictions and her eating disorder. A standard fitness class
quickly spirals into a confession, a confrontation, and a bloody reckoning with body,
mind and self.

After a violent, sleepless night with her abusive boyfriend, Meg has to go back to work at her spin studio like nothing happened. It doesn’t take long for her to spiral into a manic breakdown as she realises her version of self-care is actually brutal self-destruction. Throughout this absurd one-woman show, Meg discovers that the only thing more exhausting than the workout is running from herself.

Actor and writer Megan Tomei makes her Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut this summer with the UK premiere of her darkly comic one-woman show SpinQueen™ at Jade Studio at Greenside from Friday 7 to Saturday 29 August. Physically relentless, brutally funny and surprisingly moving, SpinQueen™ is theatre felt in every muscle,
a show that will leave audiences questioning how far we go to keep up, and what it really takes to stop.

SpinQueen™ was created between late 2025 and early 2026. It arrived 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 deeply performance, control and physical endurance had shaped her
understanding of self-worth. SpinQueen™ is the result of that reckoning.

Directed by Jennesy Herrera, SpinQueen™ blends satire, physical intensity and direct audience engagement to examine the culture of self-optimisation and the pressure placed on women to be disciplined, desirable, and emotionally contained at all times. It lands in a cultural moment where those pressures are intensifying and
self-care is increasingly distorted into a performance of perfection.

Company: Megan Tomei
Show: SpinQueen™
Venue: Jade Studio, Greenside @ George Street
The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 22-26 George Street, EH2 2PQ

Dates: Friday 7 to Saturday 29 August (no shows on Sunday 16 or Sunday 23
August)
Time: 19.35
Tickets: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/spinqueen