Ryan J. Haddad, a Lebanese American with cerebral palsy, plays “Ryan,” a stage version of himself, in Hold Me in the Water, a bittersweet comedy about a recent year of his real life.
Ryan J. Haddad’s Hold Me in the Water, like the dramatist himself, is charming and effervescent. Also like Haddad, it’s slender (though that word has different connotations when applied to the human form and to an Off-Broadway play).
As the number of memoirs published in book form and online increases every year, stage memoirs are proliferating as well—and especially solo stage memoirs. Whether performed by a seasoned actor (Kathleen Chalfant in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, for instance) or by a non-actor who has lived the story (like Patrick Bringley, currently appearing as himself in All the Beauty in the World), these projects appeal to audiences for the real-life urgency of their stories and to producers because they’re a bargain to produce.
At the outset of Hold Me in the Water, Haddad makes a crowd-pleasing entrance wearing a spangled jacket. Photographs by Valerie Terranova.
Some stage memoirs are serious and high-minded. In All the Beauty in the World, the author-performer contemplates great works of art as therapy for profound grief. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Jacqueline Novak’s 2019 hit Get on Your Knees—bawdy stand-up comedy booked into a “legitimate theater” and advertised as a play. Hold Me in the Water, ably directed by Danny Sharron, is a hybrid: amiable and bittersweet, for the most part, with an awkward burst of prurience in the middle, and a didactic coda at the end.
Haddad is both author of Hold Me in the Water and its sole performer. A Lebanese-American with cerebral palsy, he plays “Ryan,” a stage version of himself. He arrives from below center stage via a little elevator (scenic design by the resourceful collective “dots”). It’s a flamboyant entrance, and Ryan’s initial focus lingers on surfaces, colors, and brand names. He calls spectators’ attention to his color-coordinated ensemble, featuring a pink sequined sport coat. “I have on dark blue jeans and gray New Balance sneakers,” he adds. A little later, he expatiates on the pulchritude, musculature, and other exterior features of a young man he meets at an artist residency. As first impressions go, Ryan is high on the vanity-and-ostentation scale.
Doffing the spangly jacket, Ryan dials down his peacocking and shifts focus to what will comfort spectators who’re apt to be uneasy. He explains the theater’s relaxed-performance conventions: eating, drinking, noise, and roaming the auditorium are okay, and the house lights, though lowered, will not be extinguished. He introduces an ASL interpreter and an audio description provider, both of whom will operate behind him, fully visible, throughout the performance. When he mentions his high-end sneakers again, it’s because they’re “the only shoes that fit over my leg braces.” He draws audience attention to the fact that he’s “standing in a posterior or reverse posture-control walker that is metallic with black handles.”
Ryan is moonstruck when his acquainted with “the hottest guy at the artists residency” he has recently attended takes on a welcome intensity and romance ensues.
After Ryan has made those observations about being a person with cerebral palsy in an ableist world, the play becomes a dramatic reflection on access and opportunity. Ryan relies on family, friends, and occasional strangers for assistance in reaching many destinations. No one, however, has been able to help him attain romance or intimacy. “I’ve been looking and looking and looking all my life … and never finding,” he says. Then, at a rural summer artist residency, he encounters a thoroughly able-bodied young man who “knows exactly what to do” to help him maneuver over difficult terrain and, as the play’s title suggests, feel secure in the water at the beach. (Later, the young man proves adept at guiding Ryan through his initial experience of loving, full-body sexual intercourse.)
For a while, Hold Me in the Water chugs along as comedy, with Ryan’s first romance yielding a touching balance of happiness and disappointment. The script goes awry when Ryan and the young man (never referred to by name) start experimenting with who penetrates whom, how, and when. The topic isn’t inherently offensive, but the treatment draws on the British style of “in yer face” theater, lending a voyeuristic quality to things.
More problematic is the abrupt tonal shift in an unexpected après-dénouement speech. Ryan stares out into the audience and poses a series of questions beginning: “Have you ever been attracted to a disabled person before? Did you tell them?” His questions go on in an increasingly didactic vein, and the audience silence is predictably awkward. But Ryan’s queries have been raised tacitly, as subtext, through much of the play, and sensitive spectators have already been grappling with them at some level of mind or soul. Uttering these questions aloud with the house lights illuminated creates a calculated discomfiture, only a hair’s breadth from audience shaming.
Hold Me in the Water plays through May 7 in at Playwrights Horizons (416 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and information, call (212) 564-1235 or visit playwrightshorizons.org.
Playwright: Ryan J. Haddad
Director: Danny Sharron
Scenic Design: dots
Lighting Design: Cha See
Costume Design: Beth Goldenberg
Sound Design: Tosin Olufolabi
