Bathhouse.pptx, “a mess” of a play about gay bathhouses that is “a symptom of loneliness and longing” (in the words of its playwright Jesús I. Valles), won the 2023 Yale Drama Series Prize, chosen from 1,500 entries by judge Jeremy O. Harris (best known for “Slave Play”), who described it as “one of the most exciting speculative fictions I’ve encountered in years, using a unique dramaturgy to explore a queer history that is quickly being erased.”
That is enough to make “Bathouse.pptx” – to paraphrase a term borrowed from law enforcement – a play of interest. Its first full production, running at the Flea through April 22, directed by Chay Yew and gamely performed by a versatile six-member cast, is funny, forlorn, full-frontal, yes a mess; but if a work in progress, a memorable one.
Sam Gonzalez portrays a high school student giving a class presentation on the history of showers, which he calls ‘Show(er) and Tell.” “The Presenter” (as he’s called) actually wants to talk about gay bathhouses but (as we soon figure out) he is too nervous to get right to it. So, he starts on showers and cleanliness in general, projecting a series of slides (hence the “PPTX” in the title, which is the file name for PowerPoint slide shows) while reading from index cards, aided by classmates, and by ghosts from showers’ historical past, such as William Feetham (Esteban Andres Cruz,) the 18th century English inventor of the first indoor shower, all in the presence of the class (us) and the teacher Mx. Vasquez (Cruz again.)
The guest appearances turn quickly into unwanted interruptions by a parade of characters/caricatures, which are meant to be comic, or pointed, or both. They don’t consistently land, especially when there are in-jokes in the script that are not on the stage. For example, one of the seven characters that Gilbert Diego Sanchez plays gets only four lines – and in each of those lines, the character is identified in the script (but not on stage) with an 81-word description/name that begins: “A very eager, tall white man theater collaborator that gives your theater company that authentic ‘This is a theater company….”
This very eager white man etc. is in a bit involving another character, portrayed by Yonatan Gebeyehu, who identifies himself on stage as “a counseling and intervention specialist here on campus” (and is identified in the script as “A Very Supportive Person”), who asks everybody to share what they like to do in the shower. “For example, I cry in my shower. So, that’s my brave example. Anyone else?”
The white man etc. answers with a long off-the-wall story about how as a nine-year-old, he would go into his parent’s elegant shower (which we see in a slide) to play “Prostitute in the Rain…. I would press my hand against the shower door, pretend it was a car window, and I would beg the men,Please, please, take me home with you, stud…”
This serves as a preview and a prelude. The Presenter finally turns to the subject of bathhouses, and then gay bathhouses, telling the class that “many shut down in 1984,” and every year since there have been fewer and fewer until “today, in 2034, after so many, um, political shifts, no bathhouses remain.” Former bathhouses have been repurposed – including to schools, such as the one in which he is giving his presentation.
What follows are a series of scenes that take place in a bathhouse, introduced by the Presenter, which try to capture both the way they function(ed) and what they have meant to their patrons — not just a place for sex, but for solace, and camaraderie, and entertainment (Claudia Acost briefly portrays a Bette Midler-type character in a bright feathery red diva outfit), and rest; a refuge, sometimes a kind of home. In the first of these scenes, a down-in-his-luck bathhouse patron Carlos (Sanchez) asks bathhouse attendant Chela (Acosta) to let him stay overnight at the club, having nowhere else to go – or failing that to invite him home. She makes him her assistant cleaning the place. These scenes too are interrupted, by a conquistador, the Centers for Disease Control, Laura Linney, etc.
“Bathhouse.pptx,” with all its shifts and twists and meta moments, is too chaotic and convoluted to sum up easily, nor to absorb fully. It also could use a content advisory, which I don’t see on the play’s webpage, and I don’t remember in the theater, although it might not come as a total surprise that a play about gay bathhouses has blunt language, extensive nudity, and simulated sex acts. But there’s often a poignance in it and a poetry to it, even when Acosta, portraying The Bathhouse itself, describes “what I smelled like.”
Bathhouse.pptx
The Flea Theater through April 22. Extended through May 5.
Running time: Two hours, no intermission
Tickets: $25 to $54
Written by Jesús I. Valles
Directed by Chay Yew
You-Shin Chen (Scenic Design), Reza Behjat (Lighting Design), Haydee Zelideth Antuñano (Costume Design), John Gasper (Sound Design) Nicholas Hussong (Projection Design), and David Anzuelo (Intimacy and Fight Direction).
Cast: Sam Gonzalez (he/him) as the ‘Presenter, Claudia Acosta (she/her) as ‘Chela’ and others, Manuel C. Alcazar (he/him) as ‘Daniel’ and others, Esteban Andres Cruz (they/them) as ‘Mx. Vazquez’ and others, Yonatan Gebeyehu (he/him) as ‘Shaun’ and others, and Gilbert Diego Sanchez (he/they) as ‘Carlos’ and others.
Photos by Julieta Cervantes
