Holes - Belmont Theatre

The Belmont Theatre has done an admirable job bringing a seminal work of YA fiction to their intimate stage.

Holes, based on the Louis Sachar novel, begins with a pair of shoes falling from the sky, which might be our first clue things are not what they seem. The production's greatest asset is the source material: the juvenile detention facility of Camp Green Lake draws us in to a setting of gritty realism — I'm not aware of any rehabilitation program based on the claim that digging a hole a day builds character, but I wouldn't be surprised — only to slowly peel back the layers of history and legend until, imperceptibly, we realize that Camp Green Lake has been re-enchanted. We have been brought back into believing this world is a place where carrying the long-lost descendent of the fortune-teller slighted by your ancestor up a hill and singing him a song somehow truly could — but I've already given away too much of the plot. Our modern world could use a healthy dose of good old-fashioned superstition — an awareness of how events of decades and centuries past can have ramifications into the present day — and that is what Holes gives back to us.

The show is slightly hampered by a script with many short scenes that barely have room to breathe before the stage lights click back off. The show uses actual dirt and onions, which I wondered was the cause of my stinging eyes on the drive home. And it's a lot of show to put on the shoulders of such young actors.

The kid actors do all put in rock-solid performances, barely a tripped-over line in sight. They don't uniformly sell themselves as youngsters either broken or hardened by the abuse and hard labor they've been subjected to, but their interpersonal camaraderie and tensions feel well-earned. Their fight scene is well-choreographed, fast-moving, and genuinely shocking.

But it's the adults who really get to have a fun time with the material, especially the characters of the villainous Warden and Mr. Sir in the present-day, and a slightly more sympathetic villain in the past driven to becoming an outlaw.

Holes is playing through May 21st at the Belmont Theatre in York. More info and tickets are available HERE. Slight caution for onions and possibly offensive terminology referring to the Romani people.