In a lake off a beach, on a sun-warmed afternoon somewhere in upstate New York, Cupid was practicing his archery. An arrow, when it flew, pierced a young man’s torso, lodging firmly in his heart.
Now, technically, there is no mention of the Roman god of love in “Hold Me in the Water,” the deliciously funny romantic comedy from the playwright-actor Ryan J. Haddad, but there doesn’t need to be. Watching his solo performance at Playwrights Horizons, we sense that arrow strike just as surely as if we’d been there with him, the summer he was 26 and taking a dip with his hot new crush.
“This boy who’s holding both of my hands and facing me … Well, he never let go,” Haddad tells us in this slender memoir of a show, in which he plays a version of himself called Ryan. “Not for the entire hour. He held me in that water.” Then, lightly, he adds the crucial fact: “He made me feel safe.”
Haddad, who has cerebral palsy, means physically safe; a lake, with its uncertain footing, poses dangers for him. But this attractive acquaintance, whom he has just met at an artists’ residency, seems to understand intuitively what his body needs. The day before, when an already interested Ryan asked for assistance up the steps into a bookshop, the guy (whose identity he blurs: no name, few particulars) knew exactly how to help, as if he had been doing it for years.
“No questions had to be asked,” Haddad says. “No mishaps. The trust between our bodies — my hand, his hand — was magnetic and instinctual.”
Swoon.
Thus begins an exhilarating infatuation, physical trust leading quickly to emotional investment, along with palpable chemistry. But this is a rom-com, so there must be obstacles, separations, mixed signals — and agonizing over all of it, which Ryan does once he is back home in Manhattan.
An Obie Award winner for his largely autobiographical 2023 show, “Dark Disabled Stories,” Haddad here casts himself as a kind of ingénue, inexperienced in affairs of the heart. Yet he is also the hero — flirtatious, forthright and pursuing the object of his affection, envisioning a future with him.
Over drinks in the East Village after a play, “the boy” touches Ryan’s hand and declares his interest, and Ryan’s imagination is off at a gallop, charmingly.
“In the distance, I can hear the church bells chime,” Haddad says. “I can see our wedding photos, printed in the New York Times Style section. I can smell the fresh coat of paint drying in our soon-to-be-adopted baby’s nursery.”
Directed by Danny Sharron, “Hold Me in the Water” is as seamlessly, thoughtfully inclusive as “Dark Disabled Stories” was. At the top of the new show, after Haddad’s dramatic entrance on a lift through the stage floor, and his ebullient greeting — “Hello, darlings!” — Haddad gives visual descriptions of the set (by dots, the design collective) and himself (costumed by Beth Goldenberg). He notes the projected supertitles, the dimmed but not extinguished house lights, the audience’s freedom to pop in and out. (“I’m begging you,” he says, “if you need to go to the bathroom, go!”)
All this is ingratiating, sure, but there is a real sense of welcome to it, along with implicit questioning: Do some of the conventions we take for granted need to be so difficult? Is some of what we think of as discipline just rigidity, with shades of meanness?
Haddad wants his audience to be comfortable, as a base line. And in several moments, he wants the opposite. Where this rom-com tale gets frankly, vividly sexual, there is a point to that beyond plot — the same confrontational point that the show makes when Haddad asks us whether we have ever dated a disabled person, or considered the possibility of having such a romance. Sexuality is part of being a whole human, full stop.
In Ryan’s tantalizing romance, he is chasing not only his crush but also a kind of safety that has universal appeal — “when someone meets your needs without you having to ask and you never have to wonder if your needs are too much for someone else.”
Isn’t that, for many of us, a kind of holy grail?
Hold Me in the Water
Through May 4 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes.
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