Review: Bathhouse.pptx Is an Unsexy Play Set in a Gay Sauna

I love bathhouses. Known as “gay saunas” abroad, these temples of homosexuality are like shrines to Dionysus — increasingly rare. They have been vanishing since before I was born, yet another joyful thing mauled by the Old Testament wrath of AIDS, and the New Testament insidiousness of the Internet. There was a time in this town (specifically at the Continental Baths) when you could check in, have a little fun, refract while you enjoyed a set by Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, and repeat — with soap and hot water just steps away. So civilized! So humane compared to the Grindr meat market.

I suspect I’m not the only ’mo who pines for an era I didn’t actually experience. The protagonist of Jesús I. Valles’s Bathhouse.pptx has created a PowerPoint presentation about it, which you can view in its world premiere at the Flea Theater. Pay close attention and you might even catch the moments when it thrillingly reaches tumescence as a play — right before it self-consciously shrivels back into a flaccid lecture.

Valles imagines life in 2034, a time when the last of the bathhouses have shuttered. One of them, the North Hollywood Spa, has since transformed into a very progressive high school, where the Presenter (an affable Sam Gonzalez) offers a nostalgic look back at the building and others like it. Clutching his notecards, he says, “I would like to return to our earlier discussion and highlight the ways in which racialized notions of cleanliness and sexist forms of desire have contributed to the demise of bathhouses, exacerbated by the various pandemics we’ve endured over the years.”

He is quickly cut off by an official from the CDC, wearing a Gilead Sciences emblem on his white coat like a NASCAR driver might wear the logo for Mountain Dew (clever costumes by Haydee Zelideth). Earlier, our presenter is joined by a Spanish conquistador who becomes the sub in an unsatisfying BDSM routine. Esteban Andres Cruz plays both roles, earning big laughs even when the words on the page are just mildly funny. Watching Bathhouse.pptx often feels like theatrical channel-surfing. So why do we keep landing on a C-SPAN book talk?

Valles has an admirably rebellious spirit — you’d have to in order to depict, in an off-Broadway theater full of pious liberals, a representative of the CDC as anything other than a heroic teller of truths. But Valles cannot resist feasting on the academic word salad that is served on the side of so much of our culture. “Imagine our dissonant pleasures can move in concert,” the Presenter commands. “Imagine you are a way in, a door, a hallway. Imagine reprieve, respite, repose, respair, resurrection.” This verbose prophylactic sheaths the raw drama we truly crave.

We can sense it throbbing beneath the queer studies latex. Valles scatters kernels of human connection throughout the script, like the intergenerational friendship formed between Shaun (Yonatan Gebeyehu embodying a world-weariness that hasn’t curdled to cynicism) and Daniel (Manuel C. Alcazar projecting puppy-dog curiosity). Then there’s the unexpected bond formed between Carlos (a charming and vulnerable Gilbert D. Sanchez) and the cleaning lady Chela (hilariously hard and stealthily soft Claudia Acosta). The performers draw us into their stories, handsome strangers beckoning through the steam.

But then the presenter steps in to offer a Kushnerian footnote, a little placard explaining what we’ve just witnessed, in case we’re too dim to draw our own conclusions. “Is the shower a gym? Is the rectum a grave? Is the mother a place?” The presenter asks these questions with increasing urgency, like a college professor desperately trying to stimulate a bored class (Valles previously worked as a high school speech teacher). This is the tragic end-result of the university’s capture of the theater (Jeremy O. Harris selected  Bathhouse.pptx as the winner of the 2023 Yale Drama Series Prize). A potentially beautiful play gets smothered under the weight of a distended essay in the style of Andrea Long Chu.

Valles is clearly intelligent — smart enough to know this is a problem. The Presenter also wants to play but hides behind his notes and citations lest he confront his actual desires. I waited expectantly for his character arc to complete, for the intellectual to surrender to the carnal; but it never really does, not even after Gonzales heroically bares all in a ritual ablution. He’s still babbling the whole time!

Director Chay Yew compensates with a visually stimulating production. You-Shin Chen’s set evokes bathhouse cabins, little doors pack tightly together, which also help facilitate the rapid entrances and exits the script requires. Reza Behjat’s dim lighting and the gentle underscoring of disco (seductive sound design by John Gasper) help complete the environment. Meanwhile, projection designer Nicholas Hussong has dutifully created the title PowerPoint, which violently yanks us out of the illusion.

Bathhouse.pptx is a thrillingly transgressive concept executed in the blandest way possible. It’s obvious that Valles is capable of more. They just need to get out of their own way.