Ryan J. Haddad Photo by Valerie Terranova

Accompanying that rising platform and spangly jacket: a walker. Haddad is young, gay and afflicted–he might take umbrage at the word–with cerebral palsy. The tale he's about to tell, stretching back six or seven years, is a young-love story familiar in many respects, but thrown into new territory by his condition. We've had other plays about romantic relationships with the disabled, notably Martyna Majok's Cost of Living, but they've rarely been this intimate, or produced this many giggles.

That's because Haddad is such an engaging raconteur. His voice is light and expressive, his body language eloquent. After some preliminaries–"Please, I'm begging you, if you need to go to the bathroom, go! The last thing I want to do is keep people from going to the bathroom! I may even have to pee before this is over!"–the meaning of the title becomes evident pretty quickly. It's 2018 and Haddad, arriving at an artist retreat to work on another autobiographical solo show, instantly meets "the hottest guy at this residency." He lusts after him; everyone does, it seems. But Haddad, resourcefully, manages a meet-cute with the guy (whose name we never learn, nor his occupation, though whatever it is takes him out of town a lot), chats him up, starts texting him, and arranges a beach date where the guy, yes, holds him in the water.

And there Haddad experiences a safeness, an intimacy, a kindness, the likes of which he's never known. We feel we're in the lake with him. The guy sounds too good to be true, and maybe he is, but maybe not, no spoilers here. More dates follow, and sex, and it gets pretty graphic–"Slapping his ass as he thrusts inside me," a lot of that; if such stuff makes you uncomfortable, stay home. The emphasis, though, is on Haddad's inner being, his surprise, incredulity, and ultimate acceptance of being an actual object of desire, something he wasn't sure he'd ever achieve.

We find out plenty about him. His parents and grandmother support him fully, and don't get squeamish at sex talk. He's a seasoned New Yorker, and some East Village landmarks–Veselka, The Boiler Room, The Bean–get shout-outs, along with some amusing local observations: "You'd think the High Line is gorgeous from all vantage points, but, like..."

It's a small show, one that might have been more at home in Playwrights Horizons' smaller theater upstairs, and it doesn't, to put it kindly, employ a lot of resources of the theater; like many one-person shows, it's more stand-up than play. The set, by dots, is barely noticeable, until Christmas arrives, and we at least get some holiday lights and snow. Beth Goldenberg's costumes, though Haddad praises them to the skies, don't tell us much about who he is. Cha See's lighting is mostly a glowing blue, changing occasionally for mood. Danny Sharon directs, and while he keeps the 70 minutes moving and lets the punchlines reverberate, one suspects Haddad has the upper hand in the staging. One other note: There are supertitles, which throw the timing off, as the readers get to the jokes quicker. Some performances will have ASL.

But Hold Me in the Water is romantic, touching and funny, and as the commitment-level conflicts in the relationship arise, we feel genuine concern. Near the end, Haddad poses to the audience some questions that, in their pointedness and provocativeness, amount to something of a coup de théâtre. Essentially, in many permutations, he asks: Could you love a disabled person? And for many the answer will be, yes, I could, if they were as cute and charming as Ryan J. Haddad. That's admittedly a tall order.