Hold Me in the Water

Tweet

In Hold Me in the Water, Ryan J. Haddad finally receives the star’s close-up, Mr. DeMille—and it’s a moment as theatrical as it is triumphant. Ascending into view from beneath the stage on an elevator, he greets the audience with a jubilant “Hello, Darlings!”—a campy, charming overture that sets the tone for the evening. The warmth is instant and reciprocated. Yet even as he basks in the spotlight, Haddad’s signature self-deprecating wit grounds the moment: “For those of you who don’t know me,” he quips, “I don’t know how you ended up here!” One hopes more audiences do end up here, drawn into the orbit of this singular performer whose work blurs the line between theater and memoir. With fearless honesty, Haddad continues to explore what it means to be young, queer, disabled, and defiantly alive—each performance a new, riveting chapter in a life lived out loud.

If you caught Dark Disabled Stories at The Public Theater in 2023, you already know Ryan J. Haddad doesn’t spare the audience the NSFW juicy, often hilariously graphic, details of his sex life. And while his even earlier solo piece Hi, Are You Single? chronicled his exploits in gay bars, Hold Me in the Water takes a turn toward the tender. This time, Haddad’s subject isn’t just sex—it’s love, or at least the aching promise of it.

Beginning during an artists’ residency, the piece orbits around Haddad’s infatuation with “the hottest guy” in the program. With comic ingenuity and emotional clarity, Haddad recounts his attempts to bridge the literal and figurative distances between them, navigating a series of ill-suited activities for someone with cerebral palsy. A walking tour, for instance, becomes a flirtation opportunity masked as a plea for help: “Will you, um, help me into this inaccessible bookstore?” he coos, the line landing somewhere between pickup and protest.

But the show’s most luminous sequence unfolds at a nearby lake. There, Haddad finds not just physical support but emotional intimacy. “He made me feel safe,” he recalls, as their fingers interlace beneath the water, bodies buoyed and boundaries blurred. In a haze of weed—an indulgence he notes is rare—Haddad has a revelatory moment: “I wrote an entire solo show in that moment,” he says. “It was called, When He’s Holding Your Hand and Your Hand Is Shaking.” It’s a title, and a sentiment, that captures the shivering vulnerability and beauty at the heart of Hold Me in the Water.

Falling in love for the first time is rarely tidy, but in Hold Me in the Water, Haddad reveals just how dizzying—and delayed—that experience can be when it arrives in your early thirties, layered with both vulnerability and hope. While cerebral palsy shapes much of Haddad’s daily reality, the emotional complications here are of a more universal—and heartbreakingly human—kind.

What begins as a seemingly platonic bond at an artists’ residency soon crackles with erotic charge. But just as things are heating up, Haddad’s object of affection confesses to unresolved feelings for a man in Europe. He leaves for the continent, promising clarity upon his return, and Haddad is left behind in New York—dangling in romantic limbo, his heart on pause.

Enter the Haddad family, who descend like a comedic Greek chorus with a deep bench of life wisdom and zero tolerance for self-pity. His father, in particular, delivers an X-rated zinger that’s as unprintable as it is side-splitting—a highlight in a show already brimming with sharp humor. His grandmother, meanwhile, offers a more measured, but no less incisive, perspective. With their brash affection and unfiltered advice, they ground Haddad, even as his emotions remain suspended between fantasy and reality.

Fortunately for Haddad, the long-awaited message from Europe is the one he’d hoped for, and before long, he’s basking in the glow of a budding romance. But as with all good drama, there’s a complication—a quiet but piercing revelation that doesn’t explode so much as settle, slowly and uncomfortably, into the space between them. It’s not a twist, exactly, but a truth that demands Haddad confront the story he’s been telling himself. He does so with remarkable grace, leavened by the biting wit that’s become his trademark.

That balance—between emotional vulnerability and razor-sharp humor—is what elevates Hold Me in the Water beyond the sea of solo shows that mine personal experience for applause. Haddad’s artistry lies in his fierce honesty and unsparing introspection. He examines his own longing, joy, and heartache with something approaching clinical precision, yet never loses the pulse of the deeply human. He never asks for pity, and when disappointment inevitably arrives, he extends surprising compassion—even to the one who’s let him down.

Seasoned veterans of romantic misadventure may see the red flags waving early, but that doesn’t lessen the show’s pull. In Haddad’s capable hands, even the heartbreak feels like a hard-won triumph. You find yourself hoping, irrationally perhaps, that this time, love might actually stick.

As Hold Me in the Water winds its way toward an emotionally nuanced resolve, it delights in the kinds of vivid, sharply observed details that have become Ryan J. Haddad’s calling card. Haddad is no one’s tragic figure—in fact, he’s refreshingly frank and utterly in control, even when the topic turns to negotiating the logistics of penetrative sex while scanning the menu at Veselka.

He doesn’t flinch from the physical realities of sex with cerebral palsy either, tackling the subject with humor, specificity, and (an alert to those who blush easily) zero self-censorship. But Haddad’s flair for comedy also shines in the pop culture asides he laces throughout, moments that give the show a buoyant, irreverent texture, keeping it airborne even as it digs deep.

Under the deft direction of Danny Sharron, Hold Me in the Water glides along with a confidence and clarity that mirrors its star. Sharron understands precisely how to showcase Haddad’s greatest strength: his uncanny ability to transform a theater full of strangers into his most trusted besties. The production is smartly restrained, allowing Haddad’s voice and presence to shine without unnecessary embellishment.

The set, by the collective dots, functions primarily as a sleek, neutral playground—save for that unforgettable elevator entrance—but it’s Cha See’s lighting that adds real glamour, casting Haddad in elegant cinematic washes. Sound designer Tosin Olufolabi complements the mood with a subtle, evocative score of piano melodies and ambient touches particularly lapping waves, a nod to the lakeside love story. Beth Goldenberg’s costume design is so flattering, Haddad can’t help but narrate it himself in a cheeky moment of audio description at the top of the show, reminiscent of the mid-1970s RCA ColorTrak television commercial where actress Samantha Eggar drew attention to her auburn, not brown, locks.

Yet for all the polish, what truly keeps the play so involving is Haddad’s fearless introspection and his willingness to implicate the audience in the larger conversation. “Have you ever dated a disabled person?” he asks, pointedly, before following up with a litany of equally probing questions. It’s this tension between intimacy and confrontation—delivered with charm and candor—that gives the piece its lasting resonance. Hold Me in the Water may be a meditation on the fleeting nature of romance, but its emotional impact lingers long after the lights go down.

Hold Me in the Water (through May 7, 2025)

The Judy Theater at Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.playwrightshorizons.org/holdme/

Running time: 70 minutes without an intermission