Cold Sweat – Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse, Sheffield

Creators: Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Terry O’Connor

Director: Tim Etchells

There are nights at the theatre when you settle into your seat knowing roughly what the next couple of hours will bring. Cold Sweat is not one of those nights.

Created by Forced Entertainment, Cold Sweat is a contemporary theatre work with original text and sound by the group’s artistic director Tim Etchells. Building on the lip-syncing approach used in their 2024 production Signal to Noise, three performers lip-sync to AI-generated American voices layered with looping music and sound.

There isn’t a conventional story to follow. Instead, fragments of conversations, statements and moments repeat over and over. The repetition has a strange way of pulling you in. Phrases come around so often that you begin to recognise them and almost know what’s coming next, only for the performance to suddenly shoot off in a completely different direction, leaving you wondering what on earth is going on all over again.

Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall and Terry O’Connor hold the space incredibly well, interacting with each other while also appearing to be caught up in their own slightly crazy loops. The accuracy of the lip-syncing is impressive, particularly when phrases begin to overlap and the performers repeat them at different times while somehow maintaining the timing throughout. Costume and wig changes also happen on stage, becoming part of the performance itself.

The Playhouse is a great setting for the production. Its intimacy brings the audience close to the action, while Jim Harrison’s effective lighting creates shadows around the space that add depth to the otherwise simple setting and contribute to the slightly unsettling atmosphere.

At just 75 minutes, Cold Sweat is a relatively short experience, but it’s certainly an unusual one. Confusing? Absolutely. There were plenty of moments when trying to work out exactly what was happening felt like a challenge in itself. But perhaps understanding everything isn’t really the point. Strange, repetitive, funny and technically very impressive, it’s the kind of theatre that leaves you with plenty to think about — even if one of those thoughts is still, ‘What exactly did I just watch?’

Runs until Saturday 3rd October 2026