I Want It That Gay and Sauna Boy at Qtopia

The remarkable conversion of Sydney’s once threatening Darlinghurst Police Station into a sophisticated queer venue for exhibitions and shows is now a year old.  Just in time for Mardi Gras, Qtopia has launched its new 2025 season, which includes two engaging lesbian cabaret artists in the cop-shop’s converted Loading Dock, and a confronting snapshot of life in a gay sauna staged nearby in the emptied cellar of the old Substation.

There’s nothing on yet in Qtopia’s third adjacent venue, the historic, spacious underground toilets on Taylor Square, once famed as a beat.

In I Want It That Gay Cara Whitehouse and Juliet Hindmarsh set out to translate the oppressively heteronormative lyrics of their fav teenage hits to better match their emerging queer lives.  The two have an easy, natural exchange of memories about that first gay kiss, first date (disaster!), lots about haircuts, milestones into the queer scene, misgendering insults and breakups.  Indeed, their chat is so companiable that – like some of their re-written songs – it’s often under-projected.  

With Hindmarsh on guitar and Whitehouse on keyboard, their new lyrics begin with great satire but depart too fully from the original source.  The Back Street Boys’ ‘I Want It That Way’ is deliciously queered – at least the title; as is Ricky Martin’s closeted ‘She (He!) Bangs’, and Destiny Child’s ‘Say My Name’ is parodied into the persistent request Say My Pronouns.  Almost all the songs are from female singers in the 90’s to the noughties

I Want It That Gay works as an affable sharing of past traumas around sexuality, shining a satirical light on ridiculous old fears and oppressions, but needs better scripting and musical articulation to bring home the wit.

Down in the Substation, actor/writer Dan Ireland-Reeves shares the year he spent working in a gay sex sauna in regional Britain.  Nicknamed Danny Boy, he’s popular with the otherwise bitchy staff, the keen, rusted-on customers, and even the sodden owner, “Mother”.

Scantily-clad Ireland-Reeves skips energetically through this myriad of affected gay characters, in a smartly presented (well-travelled) production, about a usually secretive world dedicated to gay male sex.  Danny is the door bitch, the manager and at closing time, the cleaner – scrubbing away what’s left behind.

For some, Sauna Boy is likely an overly explicit revelation of sexual behaviour but, as Danny learns and enjoys, the sauna also serves underlying personal and community needs.  Mother, in a rare good mood, even throws the sauna a 21^st birthday party.  Beneath all the endless campy bitchery, we laugh but also see some heartfelt truths.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Sarah Malone

www.mardigras.org.au

www.adelaidefringe.com.au