As playwright-performer Ryan J. Haddad’s latest one-person show Hold Me in the Water opens, with Haddad emerging on stage with dramatic flare from a trap door wearing a dazzling sequined blazer, he runs over some housekeeping at Playwrights Horizons’ Off-Broadway Judy Theater. Which is named after neither Garland nor Haddad’s mother, he playfully explains. Every performance is relaxed, which means audience members can come and go as they need, or take a break in the lobby; open captions are displayed above the proscenium; and Haddad provides visual descriptions from time to time. Select performances have ASL interpretation and some require mask-wearing.
Haddad makes this introduction as effortlessly funny and entertaining as the play that follows, immediately inviting us in with his wit and warmth. The accessibility of this production is not only a sign of practical consideration for its audience members (frequently lacking elsewhere at entertainment venues in the city), but accessibility is also integral to Haddad’s narrative. As a man with cerebral palsy who uses a reverse posture-control walker, whether or not accessibility for someone with his mobility has been considered impacts his day-to-day life, as does the thoughtfulness of those around him.
Ryan takes us back to the summer of 2018, when he was 26 and taking part in an artist residency program to work on a new show. Various recreational activities had been planned for the participants, including attending a promenade performance around the town and going to the beach to swim in the lake. Neither of which appeared to have taken his accessibility needs into consideration, or not in a detailed enough way at least. Fortunately for Ryan, during the promenade performance he had a dashingly handsome young man there by his side to help him get around from place to place. Ryan deftly draws us into the moment as he describes “the hottest guy at this residency” helping him up the steps into a bookstore. “The trust between our bodies—my hand, his hand—was magnetic and instinctual.”
The following day at the beach, “the hot one” was also there to give Ryan a hand to get across the sand and into the water. Ryan thought that would be it, that he’d be left to perch somewhere while the others swam, but to his surprise that wasn’t the case. “He never let go. He made me feel safe. He made the beach, the lake, accessible to me”, Ryan recalls with delight. As their bodies touched in the water, Ryan reflects that “it was the most intimate” that he “had ever been with another man”. Far more so than any sexual encounter. It is as an intimacy that Haddad draws us into with the vulnerability and candidness of his expression, as well as with how fun and animated it is.
Ryan had fallen hard for this guy—who remains unnamed throughout—at first sight, and beautifully conjures how those feelings only blossomed as the man showed him care and attention in such a casual and instinctive way. He could tell that he was not helping him to get anything in return, he was just “kind and good, sweet, and steady”, Ryan reflects.
This is not a play about disability, it is a play about first love from the perspective of a gay man who happens to be disabled and his disability is just one element of the rich detail of this burgeoning relationship. As Ryan obsesses over whether his love for the man is mutual, he looks for clues in his attentiveness. Like him calling ahead to a restaurant to check that it is accessible. Or how he finds a way for their hands to touch even when Ryan is holding onto his walker.
Ryan wonders whether the kiss that they share in a crowded elevator might be the first time that some of those strangers had seen “someone with a walker, someone who is disabled, be kissed by another person.” Later, he asks the audience directly what our relationship has been to disabled folks when it comes to our romantic lives.
There is a lot to relish in the small details that Haddad’s work revels in, given emphasis by the performer’s pacing. Like that elevator kiss or the first time the two men hold hands. We are right there with them. When it comes to sex, Haddad doesn’t get coy, and that detail remains. Those sections of the play are genuinely hot and streamy and explicit, including an unapologetically frank description of Ryan’s first time having penetrative sex, that conveys both the physical sensation and the emotions that are swirling.
There’s an alluring poetic rhythm to the way Haddad’s language flows, without it losing any of its natural, spontaneous quality. Aware that he is writing for himself as a performer, Haddad knows that he doesn’t have to overwrite, trusting what added subtleties, colour and shade he can bring in the delivery of his own succinct, but beautifully expressive prose. The scenic design by dots, lighting design by Cha See and sound design by Tosin Olufolabi follow suit in how sparingly effective any changes are as they engage our imaginations. Like the shift in lighting state that suggest New York nightlife and the gently seductive swell of pop music as the action shifts to the Boiler Room, an East Village gay bar, or the appearance of a large circular mirror at the rear of the stage just as Ryan describes the romantic sunset that accompanies a date on the High Line. While Danny Sharron’s direction is similarly restrained but exquisitely precise and effective.
Hold Me in the Water captures that unique way of looking at another person, and the world, that only comes when you’re falling in love as well as the emotional turmoil of not knowing quite where you stand with someone you’ve fallen hard for. Especially when it seems that they reciprocate just enough to keep one’s passion and hope alive, but not enough to quell that torturous uncertainty. A state that leads us to bestow meaning on the minutiae of someone’s actions, like him leaving a belt behind at your place. As Ryan reflects back on what happened that summer and beyond, what becomes clear is that we are the ones who get to assign meaning to romantic encounters in our own lives, however fleeting or uncertain, and that those encounters can make an indelible impression on us regardless of the other person.
This is a tender queer love story that everyone can relate to that is gently captivating it the way it unfurls. Haddad is an evocative, spellbinding storyteller with boundless mischievous charm and killer comic timing. Hold Me in the Water is an achingly romantic, sexy and moving tour-de-force. Not to be missed.
By James Kleinmann
The world premiere production of Ryan J. Haddad’s Hold Me in the Water runs at Playwrights Horizons’ Judy Theater (416 West 42nd Street, New York) until Wednesday, May 7th, 2025. For more details and to purchase tickets head to PlaywrightsHorizons.org.