Review: The Holes, Cruising for God in the Dark Room

Straight American men are among the loneliest people on the planet. Frequently maligned in the dominant liberal culture (of which the theater is a minor constituent), straight men often struggle to find fellowship in one another, with one in six American men claiming no close friendships.

And while it is common to see men expressing physical intimacy in Europe, or even holding hands in the Middle East and South Asia, American men rarely do, lest they be categorized as gay. Despite that stigma, they quietly crave the companionship and touch of other men. I am convinced that this deficit of affection, which fathers pass onto their sons like an underwater mortgage, is one of the driving forces in our toxic politics.

So I give credit to Max Wolf Friedlich for grabbing this issue by the shaft in The Holes, now making its world premiere at the Wild Project. Ambitious, ballsy, and overwritten, it boldly confronts the off-Broadway audience with a story that needs to be heard, whether we’re ready for it or not.

It takes place in a dive bar in Kingston, New York. Joey (Bubba Weiler) tends bar, though there aren’t regulars anymore besides Martha (Tina Benko), the semi-homeless alcoholic who still pines for the glory days when Joey’s dad (now terminally ill) ran the place. Joey, a gay man who has returned to his depressing hometown out of a sense of filial piety, remembers those times as distinctly less glorious. Now tasked with running the family business, he has devised an inspired new source of revenue.

We understand in the first scene, when Wesley (Grantham Coleman) turns up with an alias and an envelope full of cash. Joey eyes him suspiciously before granting him access to the back room, where a mysterious man will give him a wanking that will change his whole life. Suddenly, Wesley wants to quit his job in venture capital and partner with Joey to transform the bar into a social and wellness club for men, with the back room serving as the grand finale of an evening of male bonding. It’s like a very special episode of Touched by an Angel co-written by Samuel D. Hunter and Dan Savage.

Friedlich’s script raises some questions: Why would Wesley drive two hours from New York City for a handy when there are many fine establishments offering that exact service in the city? How does Joey schedule time slots for customers when he’s never even had a conversation with the man in the back room? And most importantly, who is this benevolent pervert?

Carson (Jack Mulhern), a precariously employed former classmate of Joey and frequent visitor to the back room, offers an incredible explanation: It’s Jesus Christ, as evidenced by the holes in his hands. Stigma, meet stigmata.

Friedlich, writer of the Broadway psychological thriller Job, takes a bigger swing here with a play that not only touches on the crisis of male loneliness, but what I have previously referred to as the “God-shaped void” in our lives as atomized consumers. His characters, a microcosm of the liberal West, attempt to fill that hole with booze, business, and bro jobs. Friedlich has subtitled The Holes “a fairytale,” which explains some of the more fantastical turns in his script.

Unfortunately, director Michael Herwitz’s blandly realistic production does little to support the supernatural elements in this story about heaven-sent hand jobs. Anna Grigo’s set immediately conveys the desperate state of the bar, with its cheap paneling and limited selection. It feels bleak under Evan C. Anderson’s unforgiving lighting. Lily Cunicelli’s costumes account for the class differences onstage, with the practical upstaters wearing ill-fitting garments selected for their warmth. Only sound designer Brandon Bulls seriously attempts to convey the magic in the back room, but with a cue that sounds a lot more like a glitching social media app than a divine revelation.

That places the onus on the actors to set the tone. The always excellent Benko is particularly compelling as a Hudson Valley Tiresias. “It’s for women really,” she says, a dark resonance in her voice like she’s discussing the spring at Lourdes. “You come to the bar angry, ready to hit somebody—your wife probably—n’you leave calm. That Man’s been molding this community, sculpting better men with his bare hands.” She foresees only doom coming from this attempt to monetize such a blessing.

But Coleman’s performance makes it clear that Wesley (who we initially meet as “Paul”) is an evangelist who will not be denied, who will do anything to get potential investors to shout, “yes, yes, YES!” His brief interactions with Carson (whom Mulhern endows with the affable dimness of a man who wants to do right in a world set up to enslave him) illuminate the simmering tension between manic strivers and the working class.

Weiler, himself a gifted playwright, serves as the many-chambered heart of this production. His Joey is intelligent, cynical, yet quietly hopeful that something extraordinary will come around to give his life meaning. He’s where I suspect a lot of the audience is, which makes him an ideal tour guide. But even Weiler’s understated charms wear thin as The Holes passes the two-hour mark and Friedlich desperately searches for a way to wrap up the beautiful mess he has unpacked onstage.

For all its shagginess, I would still recommend seeing The Holes, an imperfect play that still feels groundbreaking. With generous amounts of humor, Friedlich earnestly tries to reach an audience sadly accustomed to writing off men’s issues as so much privileged whining, a position buttressed by a willful ignorance of male sexuality and a refusal to contemplate anything that deviates from our simplistic sexual taxonomy. Eventually, we’re going to have to relinquish our smug certainty about the world if the theater is ever to be relevant to the wider culture again.

Like the man in the back room, The Holes is waiting for you downtown when you’re ready to let go.