Lakewood Playhouse has a real winner on its hands with its charming new production “Holes.” Based on the popular, award-winning book by Louis Sachar, later made into a Disney film, the comedy/drama is sure to please viewers of all ages with its universal themes of friendship, justice and being true to one’s self.
Henry Walker plays Stanley Yelnats IV, around whom the story centers. It seems Yelnats is a good child yet a magnet for abuse. He ends up getting lots of it when he is wrongly accused of stealing and sentenced to do time at Camp Green Lake, a dust bowl of a youth correctional facility in the middle of a west Texas desert. There he meets a group of boys who challenge him on many levels, both physically and emotionally, but the young man perseveres and by the end of the story he achieves personal growth and the happiness for which he yearns.
Yelnats is convinced that he is subjected to so much grief because of a family curse waged on his Latvian great-great-grandfather by a gypsy in the 1800s. However, the curse turns out to be a blessing when it leads the boy to realize his destiny to clear his family’s, and his own, name. In the meantime he must spend his days doing manual labor, digging one hole a day “as wide and as deep as your shovel,” snarls dominating taskmaster Mr. Sir (Scott C. Brown). Under the blazing sun, and with very little water, he digs with the other adolescent inmates who are also misfits in their own ways: X-Ray (Izaic Yorks), Armpit (Alex Domine), Magnet (Jonathan Hogue), Zig Zag (Lex Gernon), Tough Kid (Hunter Larsen) and Zero (Joseph Allegro).
Camp Green Lake is a bad place run by bad people with the warden (Christie Flynn) forcing the detainees to dig for something she wants to get her hands on, something that, unbeknownst to her, will release the secret of Yelnats’ past. Several different stories intertwine into one in this multi-layered play and in the end it all comes together with the bad guys finishing last and the good guys finally getting what they rightly deserve.
Walker, a junior at Stadium High School, plays Yelnats with heart and the friendship he strikes up with the adorable little Zero (Allegro, a student at Mason Middle School) makes the play quite enjoyable and at times downright heartwarming.
All the boys play their roles very well and it is their energy that makes the play at once funny and touching. The cast includes about 20 actors, some who play multiple roles. There is a lot going on in this play, and although it does not get confusing the viewer is best advised to pay close attention to the storyline. Presented “in the round” at Lakewood Playhouse, “Holes” encourages a deeper level of intimacy with the actors such that the audience feels like part of the action rather than just observers.
The play is directed by Naarah McDonald.
