Love in this tub

A first-timer gets caught up in the steam,
the towels and the penises in
Bathhouse: The Musical

SINGING IN THE SAUNA:
The cast of Bathhouse: The Musical

By NEIL BOYCE

Davyn Ryall, artistic director of Village Scene Productions, makes a good point: “Anything can be turned into a musical these days,” he says. “You just need one germinal idea.”

Indeed. Attach the words “The Musical” to any phrase (Evil Dead and Autism are two current examples), and a tonne of possibilities emerge. So the presumptive question is not “Why set a musical inside a gay bathhouse?” No, it’s “why not?” Furthermore, there’s no reason not to call it Bathhouse: The Musical.

A hit at the Orlando Fringe Festival last year, the piece was repackaged for tours in the U.S. this summer. It’s one of the few shows that made the difficult transition from success inside the Fringe bubble—where work can be a fast but fleeting hit during festival mania—to the realities and rigors of a professional touring production.

Originally set to arrive from the states in October for the LGBT Harvest Festival, Ryall felt he couldn’t wait until the fall, not with the summer season so ripe for a silly musical and with Montreal such a unique setting.

“I wanted to Canuck the piece,” he says. “The original was from Florida, the Bible belt, and was a little more suppressed. We could take it to another level here, and localizing it was really important.”

Put together quickly, recast and rejigged for Montreal—a city with its own massive bathhouse/sauna culture and unfettered attitudes—the Canadian cast version will tour Ottawa and Toronto next, and is an official event in both Montreal and Ottawa Pride Celebrations this year.

If its jokes and stereotypes about those who follow the bathhouse scene might only be fully appreciated by a gay male audience, women will show up to ogle the buff dudes as well, and anyone can partake in what looks to be a fun evening out for the non-uptight, irrespective of gender and orientation.

Musical Director Corey Castle, having worked extensively all over Montreal, says this job is unique. “I’ve done a lot of musicals, and the thing that was different about this is that the cast is all guys, and that their costume consists of a towel,” he laughs, “which sometimes made the choreography challenging.”

The flimsy story and flimsier wardrobe concerns a young man’s first visit to a bathhouse, searching for true love in a venue where patrons are typically after something more immediate. Presented as a “male burlesque,” the dialogue is minimal—with 17 tunes in an hour and a half, it would have to be—connecting song and dance numbers like “Friendly Neighbourhood Bathhouse,” “In the Shower,” and “Penises are Like Snow Flakes.”

“For the gay audience who understand bathhouse culture,” says Castle, “the piece would make perfect sense, but it is a musical: there are songs in a variety of different styles—blues, gospel, Broadway, pop—and the jokes aren’t so specific that you have to be gay to understand them.”

“It’s sort of like raunchy humour,” he adds. “If somebody told a dirty joke about gay guys, straight people could understand it regardless. Body parts are body parts—if you’re making jokes about them, people get it. You know what I mean?”