Inside the Fringe's Sauna Theatre: Aufguss reviewed

Aufguss x Nils Frahm ★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

Aufguss x The Waves ★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

I never thought I’d see an actor upstaged by an essential oil. In some ways, it’s sad that the site of one of Summerhall’s most magnificent theatre spaces – Paine’s Plough’s Roundabout, which premiered Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer and other Fringe hits – is now occupied by a giant sauna. Whether it’s a sign of the commercialisation of the Fringe or Summerhall’s well-publicised financial battles, the result is – at least for these two shows – a place where the theatre means less than the shell in which it takes place. But, designed by the Lucy Osbourne (Studio Three Sixty), who was also behind the Roundabout, what a shell it is.

If you haven’t been to one of the 600+ capacity saunas that I’m told exist abroad, walking into this 80-seat, 90-degrees venue feels akin to what the Neolithic people must have felt when they left their round house and first saw the mega structures of the Ness of Brodgar. And there’s a similarly sacred atmosphere to the ritual and rules – including etiquette notices and a waiver – of it all.

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After you’ve got changed in one of the huts outside (bring you own swimming costume or, for a more Fringe experience, borrow one from a bucket and a pair of communal flipflops), you enter the sauna (rent two – yes, two – or bring your own) and the Aufguss ceremony, which originated in 20th-century German bathhouses, begins. While these ceremonies can apparently be narrative-driven, here, in both shows, it’s a looping routine carried out by a ‘sauna master’ who crushes balls of ice and incense into one of three open stoves and then repeatedly swooshes a towel like military flag to wave the resulting atmosphere around the room.

Is the ice a metaphor for death? Or the ever-moving towels evocative of the circle of life? No, it’s the moment where acting gets absorbed by aromatherapy, where ‘wellness experience’ replaces a well-scripted play. Or maybe it just depends on how you determine what ‘the show’ is: the sauna performer-workers in their Therme branded t-shirts? Or we, the audience, standing in the shower between 10-minute ‘sessions’ in our swimming costumes, as curious people going to different shows come to see what’s going on. It’s certainly a surreal site.

Within the freshly cut wood of this newbuild, the sauna masters carry out their routine with similar unexpressive and impressive commitment, whether it’s to ambient music and electronica (Aufguss x Nils Frahm) or ambient music and the prerecorded, similarly circling words of Virginia Wolff (Aufguss x The Waves). In both Aufgusses, music adds ambiance to the mood in the same way an MP3 player might in a yoga session. Loudly amped actors emoting in x The Waves, disconnected from the context in which they ‘perform’, is less relaxing. Some audience members close their eyes. Whether they’re tuning in or out is unclear.

Having a sauna is great. Having two in less than 48 hours is borderline psychedelic. But what’s interesting about non-theatre saunas is often the chat between the real-life people that you find in them. Here, this is replaced the tightly controlled, carefully thought-through and elegantly executed organisation that leaves little space for this. Sometimes a sauna just needs to be a sauna – and this one is a remarkable space for a spa treatment that, in a challenging festival environment, is flawless. Hopefully, one of the other shows in its programme (Mysteries of the Picts perhaps) can bring some more drama. Sally Stott

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