If you’ve never seen Ryan J. Haddad in performance, there’s something about him that’s wonderfully familiar. Being at one of his shows makes you feel like you’re with an old friend, settling in with a cup of tea—which is about to be spilled. That was immediately clear in his 2023 autobiographical show Dark Disabled Stories, and it’s especially true in his current one-man show, Hold Me in the Water, at Playwrights Horizons.
For those who aren’t familiar with Haddad, here he is, in his own words: “I’m a man of Lebanese descent with short black hair, that has tufts of grey these days, and round tortoiseshell glasses…” That visual description, he explains, provides access for blind and low-vision theatergoers. And speaking of access: Every performance of Hold Me in the Water features open captioning—all the dialogue, including Haddad’s periodic descriptions, are projected onto the proscenium. House lights are dimmed, not fully lowered, enabling audience members to come and go and move around as need be. Mask-required and ASL-interpreted performances are also available.
Dark Disabled Stories—which received multiple Obie Awards, including Best New American Play and special citations for Haddad and his costars, Dickie Hearts and Alejandra Ospina—centered largely on accessibility, on navigating crowded buses, uneven pavement, broken elevators, gay bars, embarrassing brunches, and other everyday New York City activities. (Full disclosure: I co-chaired the Obie judging committee that season.) A series of frequently funny, sometimes defeating, always eye-opening vignettes, the show felt a bit like flipping through Haddad’s datebook. The very intimate Hold Me in the Water, meanwhile, is a deeper dive—like reading his diary. Unfiltered and unafraid.
Directed by Danny Sharon, Hold Me focuses on one relationship, and one guy whom Haddad first spots at a summer artist residency. At one of the group’s inaccessible outings, he asks for help going up a few steps. “And when he did that, it wasn’t like somebody I’d just met three days ago.… The trust between our bodies—my hand, his hand—was magnetic and instinctual.” The next day: an anxiety-ridden trip to the beach. After dragging his walker through the sand, Haddad figures the guy will help him into the water, where he can “hold court” and “hope that somebody will come talk to me.” But no. “He held me in that water. And he moved me about with everybody else. But he never let go. He made me feel safe.… And from what I could tell, he wasn’t doing this out of lust or desire. He wasn’t trying to gain anything. He was just kind.” On the Fourth of July, they skip fireworks—“Explosive sound is not fun because of my neurological disability, my cerebral palsy,” Haddad shares—to watch a movie and get high. “I don’t smoke, okay? But when the hottest boy in school asks you if you wanna smoke, you smoke.”
We feel like we’re right there with Haddad as he recalls the early goosebump stages of the relationship—the handholding, the flirting, the overanalysis of texts, the visions of “wedding photos, printed in The New York Times Style section” dancing in his head. Where Hold Me goes—and where they end up—we won’t share. But Haddad leaves us with a few thoughtful questions: “Have you ever dated a disabled person?” (He hasn’t, he admits. “Yet. That I know of.”) “Have you ever…even entertained the idea that romance might be possible for you and them?” He’s not judging; he’s just asking questions that, truthfully, no one has ever really asked.
Hold Me in the Water opened April 23, 2025, at Playwrights Horizons and runs through May 4. Tickets and information: playwrightshorizons.org
