Sauna Boy
The Space @ Surgeons Hall, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
★

DAN IRELAND-REEVES has clearly calculated that it is worth making a succes-de-scandale at the Edinburgh fringe by lifting the veil on the gay sauna and, on the night that I saw the show, it was entirely sold out with one solitary woman in an audience of men.

Reeves claims that the show is “semi-autobiographical.” It is the diary of a year spent as manager of a London sauna, at £13 an hour. He presents himself as neutral and naive, and the characters he meets as stereotypes: the deluded alcoholic that owns it, the camp Spaniard and sarcastic Ulsterman who are co-workers, the patronising buffoon that is its posh regular, and the non-individuated studs whose eye he hopes to catch.

This superficiality — if amusing for five minutes — is the problem. Reeves delivers his nervy, self-congratulatory monologue in rapid-fire delivery, stand-up style, and the failure to explore any wider dimensions of this fascinating and liminal social space leaves the queasy feeling that he can’t be bothered to go deeper, or he’s ashamed. Or perhaps that he assumes that a public audience wants any presentation of intimacy between men to be saturated in homophobia, both internally and explicitly.

Saunas have existed, particularly in London, not simply to meet sexual needs like a glorified public toilet, but for gay men to be in a safe space for consensual encounters. A non-homophobic perspective would surely celebrate this, and an authentic experience would surely encounter real beings within it. Sexuality is a delicate issue, full of vulnerability and back-story, with rich pickings for the patient author. But we depart the show with secrets undisclosed, biographies unwritten and none the wiser, even about the narrator himself.

Rather we get the impression of a bitter millennial on work experience, retrospectively taking revenge. He doesnt disclose a personal story but tells the story of his personal business success, as though content to prove himself to be a good apprentice, Alan Sugar-style.

If it were a placement at a supermarket this kind of narrative would be offensive. But such offence can still be directed at gay men, it seems, in the expectation of public consent.

Depressing.

Runs until August 23. For tickets see: thespaceuk.com