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Sauna Boy

 
Paul Fisher Cockburn Review by Paul Fisher Cockburn 4 Published: 6 Aug 2025 theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall Show Dates: 1 Aug 2025-16 Aug 2025

There are times when, for whatever reason, it’s just too… “neat”.

A fascinating glimpse of a unique and self-contained world

The “it” in question is Sauna Boy, a one-man show based on writer-performer Dan Ireland-Reeves’s experiences of working in a gay sauna. It comes to the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe on the back of a successful international tour, including a sell-out run at Melbourne’s LGBTQ+ Midsumma Festival. Closer to home, it earned Ireland-Reeves an Oscar Wilde Award for Best Writing at the 2024 International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.

Which, is absolutely fair: Ireland-Reeves’s script is sharp, insightful and surprisingly tender on occasions; it’s as strongly paced as the show’s pulsing soundtrack, and even dares to be educational – not least during a brief section where, in rapid succession, Ireland-Reeves succinctly answers “Eight Frequently Asked Questions About Working in a Gay Sauna”. Nor does he hold back in his performance; he imbues his various characters – primarily the small core staff at the sauna, as well as a few of the regular clients – with slightly more depth than you’d expect from their initially superficial “gay scene” personas.

And yet, on occasions, the show feels just a little too honed; for example, there’s something just too “neat” in Ireland-Reeves’s time at the West End Sauna lasting one week shy of a full year. Not that I’m saying this isn’t true: it just has the feel of a writerly contrivance to give more impact to his narrative.

Nicknamed “Danny Boy” by the staff, Ireland-Reeves quickly rose up the ranks to sauna manager and certainly appears to have taken the job seriously; if there’s one thing we don’t get distracted by in Sauna Boy, it’s any sense of the rest of his life outside the West End Sauna’s doors. (Given the mentions of 12+ hour shifts, this is hardly surprising. Nevertheless, at one point, it’s genuinely startling when Ireland-Reeves mentions choosing to leave his car in the car park and walk home to “cool down” after a particularly stressful day. He owned a car?)

Ireland-Reeves has, undoubtedly, created a very enjoyable show; it provides a fascinating glimpse of a unique and self-contained world built on secrecy, desire and – at least for the sauna’s “regulars” – a genuine sense of shared history and community. Thanks to his skill as both writer and performer, we genuinely grow to care about the coterie of characters he describes, in no small way supported by finely tuned stage lighting and sound cues.

I just wish everything wasn’t quite so… “neat”.

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The Blurb:

Dan works at the UK's most successful and infamous gay sauna. A place where men from all walks of life come to relax, socialise and most importantly... f*ck. Join Dan as he navigates a hidden world of lust, friendship and unorthodox working relationships. From multi award-winning writer and performer, Dan Ireland-Reeves, comes a semi-autobiographical look behind the curtain of one of the world's most secretive and seductive industries. Pulsing with frenetic energy and laced with sexual tension, Sauna Boy is guaranteed to touch you in more ways than one. Winner of Oscar Wilde Award for Best Writing 2024.