Hole review: The Great Sucking, buttplugs and gay awakenings
Starring Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, Hole is engagingly sincere and compellingly absurd
Pastor Garth awakes from a dream in which he’s had a vision that upends his world: ‘The Great Sucking’ is coming! And once The Great Sucking does eventually come (pun intended), the souls of anyone not wearing a butt plug will be lost forever. So, Garth does what any responsible pastor does when he receives a prophecy of such magnitude: he converts his Nebraska-based congregation to his cause – or at least as many as will follow him on his rather irregular new life mission of wearing a butt plug 24/7 to save humanity.
So begins years of waiting. And waiting. Until…
What is Hole about?
Focused on the journey of teen boys Connor (Leonhard-Hooper) and Luke (Brasch), their slowly surfacing gay feelings are at odds with their religious sect’s teachings. (If we don’t ask the uncomfortable question about teenagers wearing butt plugs, it’s probably for the best. This is extreme fiction, after all.)
Connor and Luke do what most Mormon-esque religious followers do and bury their sexuality. Awkward teen emotions begin to surface after they are given a mission by Pastor Garth to investigate a nearby community of gay men that threatens their belief system.
The two-hander musical comedy is performed and written by Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, aka off-Broadway duo American Sing-Song (A.S.S.), who also voice and perform the roles of all the characters from behind their on-stage, sci-fi-esque set, furnished with a piano, instruments and other random knick-knacks. Brasch is the story’s lynchpin by virtue of it being hooked around his piano playing, as Leonhard-Hooper takes on, well… every other sound device that she can lay her hands on. Adding a layer of perfectly timed madcap comedy to the already off-kilter narrative, Leonhard-Hooper amplifies every song and story development with a myriad of ‘instruments’ – from wood-carved frogs to plastic megaphones, via a bird-tweeting squeezy thing (my wording, not theirs…).
A post-apocalyptic world exploring sexual awakening
Where the piano often plays the ‘third’ in many infamous US cabaret duos – see Kiki and Herb, Liberace and Liza – here, all manner of other audio effects add to this veritable orgy of cabaret song and sound. Brasch and Leonhard-Hooper’s voices bounce off each other; their synergy is perfection. The pair navigate the audience into their peculiarly engaging post-apocalyptic world and through Luke and Connor’s sexual awakening with addictive glee, taking us from obscure plot twist to obscure plot twist.
Brasch and Leonhard-Hooper deliver it all with engagingly sincere and compelling absurdity. It’s a journey that could fall flat on its face at any moment, made all the more impressive when, after the closing number, they thank the crowd and reveal that, after a tense delay, their set only arrived from the USA just hours before their Soho Theatre debut! Thoroughly impressive all round.
Get your fill of Hole at Soho Theatre until – 1 August, before it takes over Underbelly Cowbarn, Edinburgh, 5 – 30 August. For tickets visit the official Soho Theatre or Edinburgh Fringe website.