"...Mason's Hole," a comic fantasy of the highest order

In “What Came Up from Mason's Hole,” a new play by Rick Rocha (TEETH and Stallions) and Patches Aloha (Chapo Trap House, Podcast About List), we see how imagination and realism can bubble up to create something beautiful and comical. An absolutely hilarious journey into a fantasy world set in Michigan, the show begins with an all white set, designed by Helene Helleu, covered by cottony snow with a sort of heavenly feel, as if we’re in the clouds. We know we’re not in a mundane world of kitchen sinks, but a dangerous, cold other-worldly place where men have come to search for themselves and fish, dreaming of the simplicity of their childhood and, maybe, to make peace. Women are here, but they are guests. Men can be killers, Zachary Zamsky as Mason says. He may be sexist, but he’s convinced killing is a male trait. He says it with such certainty and doubt that when, at the end of the play, we find out that the murderer is not who we thought, it acturally turns those statements into a form of foreshadowing gone awry.

The cast and characters here work so well together, as hand in mitten, in this beer-drinking brotherhood. Zachary Zamsky as Mason is as confident as Ralph Cramden, proclaiming himself the Columbus of this patch of ground. Carlos, played by Patches Aloha, is his quiet wing man ready with wrong-headed observations, while Jeph Cangé as Tucker mangles movie titles all night long until we find he may have mangled much more. Rick Rocha is a smoldering fire, furious over a wrong. Meanwhile, Twyla Hatt as Grace is the one who committed the dastardly deed at the core of the play, while Grace Kaiser is Patricia, a loyal friend and sounding board. Nathaniel Jameson’s Leblanc steps out of a cartoon as a comic, even absurd authority figure. Hennessey Moriarty emerges from the fishing hole, and Rick's mind, as a mermaid and a spot of summer in a wintry world.

The setting, in this world after man's fall from grace, is as key to the story as these friends in this bromedy (a comedy about brotherly friends). This so-called reunion, designed to lay to rest old grudges, occurs at a hole drilled in the snow for ice fishing, although all sorts of objects are fished out including a Michael Moore DVD (“Roger and Me;” this is Michigan, after all), fish and eventually a beautiful mermaid with a multicolored fin, the female as fantasy rather than reality. One never knows what one will find in this magical hole on the stage of the Paradise Factory Theater, on East Fourth Street or what one might call Downtown’s Theater Alley/Row down the block from La MAMA, the New York Theatre Workshop, Rod Rodgers and near Theater for the New City.

The four men gather at this ice fishing hole in Michigan, a place that, to Mason, represents freedom away from it all where people can say what they think and not worry what the world thinks. Men can be men here; well, at least boys. Political correctness gets the cold shoulder for these Michiganians who yearn for a simpler time and world. Put your hook in the water and wait. They clutch beer cans, as if clinging to security blankets, ravenous for a connection to civilization (cell phones are allowed) and grabbing onto alcohol to find a raft in the flood of reality that comes rushing by. This is a place, unchanged, frozen, far from everyone else where they can be what they wish they were, say what they think and, maybe, heal old wounds and be bigger than they could.

“This is Mason’s hole,” Mason says. “You can say what you want.”

Audiences will find a wonderful dramatic comedy with a great cast in this hole, a mythic place where two feuding men have been brought together. Zamsky as Mason himself is an Eveready rabbit full of ridiculous proclamations, a benign blend of endearing bravado and bashfulness, a believer in guns and hunting halfway between the Honeymooners and hallelujah. The friends are so funny in this play, flawlessly directed by Nathaniel Jameson, that a laughometer would likely never stop ringing. Zachary Zamsky, Patches Aloha, Jeph Cangé and Rick Rocha trade lines with musical precision.

We hear the characters say a lot in a play that blends realism with fantasy in a way that creates a singular style, which makes this not just an entertaining script, but an original one. Ionesco meets Shepard in this world where words are paired in fun, fanciful ways. We hear about “East Michigan royalty” which sounds suspiciously contradictory (not even “Michigan” royalty) like the king of the water closet. At a time when so much theater teaches us lessons, this is a fun, entertaining, dark comedy, Appropriate in Antarctica, produced by Briana Bursten, that lets imagination take it in new directions.

The men are charming buffoons who try to pretend women want them. They seem eager to cheat, but too ethical to do it (married men can look), prisoners of their own Puritanical upbringing. They think women are fascinated when men don’t look away from them, adoring their attention. They understand all the secrets of women, except they are wrong about everything. These men will be boys in a play so funny that you’d need a stand up routine to have faster paced jokes. At times, it may feel a little bit like standup, but the humor comes from character and all the humanity we find in Mason’s Hole, among people at once eager to be politically correct and offended by the very idea of language police.

These are men who got the short end of the social stick in a state that got the short end. We hear about a beautiful woman – a “smoke show” – who Mason says texts him, a sign that she is interested. Well, that beautiful woman sort of has to text him, because he’s doing a job for her. Yes, she turned down his Facebook friend request, but Zamsky with great intensity tells us he is convinced she is infatuated with him. These are lovable losers, humorous if hostile people who deal with rejection by refusing to accept it, closing their eyes, imagining people have a crush on them. There is, however, a deeper, darker side to these dawgs that has to do with the belief that Jeph Cangé kas Tucker killed Rick’s dogs in supposed self-defense. Yes, two dogs, both of them. Scores must be settled, even if we find that Twyla Hatt as Grace is the canine killer. Women, you see, are the doers, even killers while weak men pose, preen and promulgate.

While there is a serious side to this winter’s tale, it's safe to say that this is one of the funniest, most imaginative plays I’ve seen in a long time. The structure isn’t perfect, with scenes between Twyla Hatt’s Grace and Grace Kaiser’s Patricia serving more to introduce information than anything else. These could have been accomplished by having the men go hiking, leaving the women to talk in the snow. But the entire cast is good and has chemistry. Many people use theater to hold a mirror up to reality; this play creates a new, fun, absurd, but heartfelt reality where the characters toward the end can all burst into song, not like in a musical, but as characters who join Jameson’s Leblanc in a Canadian-like chorus in the cold. Leblanc’s cop/ranger arrives like a clown, threatening to impose reality. Instead of authority, he elevates the absurdity which, as in a farce, only gets more outlandish with time.

There are periods that feel like jokes strung together, but the play gets more serious when we find out about the feuding fellows. The dynamic is just so much fun to watch and hear in this world free from the constraints of realism. When Zamsky’s Mason pulls out a rifle, and insists that combatants hug it out, he’s using violence to compel affection, in just one of the play’s many cold blooded contractions. When Rocha and Cangé wrestle, it’s people displaying the imitation of long lost masculinity. Although it’s a fight, that fits, it is still fun, showing testosterone spinning out of control. We see Kaiser and Hatt in a series of flashbacks, with the feminine settings of tables and chairs, as we watch the men alone like animals in the cold. But the women too shed light on these men in their kind of cold Eden where the truth is the snake.

There is something special about these men in nature, like a comic “Call of the Wild.” We hear about this fishing hole as “a sacred place” that is “the last chance at salvation” where ice seems to represent not just a cold day, but a kind of deep freeze for emotions and possessions amid beers downed, secrets revealed and friends forgiven out of the reach of the castrating gasp of civilization. These fallen Adams at once try to be free from political correctness, and are painfully aware of that correctness, in a play rich in comic dialogue with a little poetry scattered across the stage in talk about stares like “a series of looks in a silent film.” Marriage is a battle in which the enemy knows your greatest weaknesses and strengths, to paraphrase the play. These men are immature and immersed in their illusions. The dialogue provokes laughter while avoiding the trap of being literary. When Mason tells a joke about “San Jose,” pronounced with an “h” and not a “j” like “hoon” (June) and “hoolaye” (July), it feels like he’s trying to entertain his friends and in the process entertains us as we look in.

The play mixes realistic dialogue with wild imagination and absurd comedy to create a world all its own well worth seeing. We see Rick, wounded and lonely at the end, giving up all hope, so hungry for female companionship that he imagines a mermaid in Mason’s Hole. In the end, Rick is separated from the pack, like a dog barking at the moon. And he disappears into the deep fishing hole of his dreams, swallowed by the cold water and the sorrow he feels, following a beautiful woman, a fantasy who cannot walk, but only swim in cold water, trapped in the bottomless pit that surrounds her. He says he is “so lonely” as if loneliness is a disease that he can die of by disappearing into himself.

When Jameson’s ranger arrives toward the end, threatening to shut the group down like parents closing the party, the men rebel, saying they’re just trying to fish. But fishing and drinking alcohol are both forbidden here in this wintry garden of Eden. The officer decides to look the other way. But we find out that Mason’s Hole is not private, as this ranger tells them he’s in charge. People go to Mason’s Hole…looking for peace, rest and unity. Audiences going will find humor, heartfelt characters and a fun story as exciting and entertaining as any fisherman’s catch. Mason’s Hole… is a truly original work by a truly talented theater group. If you want to go fishing for entertainment, this is a great place to place your rod.

It’s just a funny, fun, fast-paced show. Bravo for doing something good and original and executing it with such consistent skill and zeal. Mason’s Hole is a truly great journey into theater and the human soul with some of the silliness of Larry Shue. The theater was packed when I went. This production doesn’t need to fish for compliments. Audience members left smiling and praising a great show after having a wonderful experience. What more can you ask from a visit to Mason’s Hole or any theater anywhere? If you see the show, you may leave and ask yourself which was the most entertaining moment. The wonderful thing is there are so many; it’s unlikely that any two people will agree. For me, it’s probably the surprising, comically surreal, magical appearance of a breathtakingly beautiful if somewhat stereotypical mermaid with a beautiful voice, female companionship just out of reach, in a comic moment that precedes a tragic event in this play that has so much humor and still manages to have even more heart. The writers clearly love these characters (they also portray them). So does the whole cast and so do we. Mason’s Hole is a whole lot of fun with heart. What more can anyone, or any audience, ask? Mason’s Hole is “hust” a great night of theater whether you see it in hoon, hooly or any time, full of lots of “hoy” to the world or at least to the part of the world in this theater.