Sauna Boy | The Cheeky Sparrow | Until 17th February | ★ ★ ★ ★
This one man show sees writer and performer Dan Ireland-Reeves share the tale of the year he spent working in a gay sauna.
It’s filled with lots of different characters, the high maintenance owner with a love of show tunes, the receptionist with serious attitude, the local drag queen, the ageing Irish co-worker, and all the different clients who while away the hours clamped in a towel and wandering between the jacuzzi, sauna and private rooms.
Impressively Ireland-Reeves plays them all, switching accents, mannerisms and voices at a quick-fire speed.
It’s not only a fascinating look into a world that people from outside the realm of gay men are largely oblivious to, but also an investigation into those jobs we fall into when we were planning to be doing something else, but we remain because we like the paycheck or the people we work with.
As you enter the upstairs space at The Cheeky Sparrow you might fear it’s an immersive production. As we queued on the stairs waiting for the door to open it was sweltering. Luckily once you get into the space it’s well airconditioned and pleasant.
This show was a tightly paced performance that held attention, delivered some laughs and had a deeper meaning beneath it all.
See Sauna Boy until 17th of February. For tickets and more information, head to fringeworld.com.au
Graeme Watson is an editor at OUTinPerth. He has a background in journalism, creative writing, dance, theatre, radio and film working as a performer, producer and writer. Graeme writes for a variety of publications and has been working as a reviewer since 1997.
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