Trapped in their seats between the wall and minimalist set, the audience was pulled into the world of Lake Greenwood’s daily hole-digging through violent yelling, murder, blood and a sense of eeriness, at the performance of “Holes” on March 16th.

This year’s spring play, Holes was originally a novel by Louis Sachar followed by a classic 2003 movie featuring a young Shia LaBeouf. The play follows Stanley Yelnats (freshman Luke Garvey), who is falsely accused of stealing expensive shoes and is sent to the ironically named “Camp Greenlake,” where he digs holes in the desert and toils under the eye of Mr. Sir (senior Gareth Jones), Mr. Pendanski (junior Ian Hansen) and The Warden (freshman Abby O’Halloran).

Much of the play can be described as dry and straight to the point, fitting given the desert setting. The first act of the play is cumbersome at points, with humor and plot progression being as scarce as water at the sandy camp. Piano flourishes and fast physical movements are absent, and instead characters slowly communicate with each other and waltz from plot point to plot point.

While “Holes” lacks some of the excitement seen in the original book and movie, it brings a new element that makes it all the more interesting: violence. Various characters are maimed, and a few are murdered as the plot ambles along. In the moments where Mr. Sir or the stupendously played Kate Barlow (senior Valentia Burlak) are left in the empty soundscape yelling out in pain or letting out blood curdling screams, the play becomes, for a moment, much more intriguing.

There is a positive side to the minimalistic approach to “Holes,” though, that enhances certain scenes. Most notable are the scenes around Sam the onion picker (senior DJ Ambroise), whose boat is a quite impressive prop. The set design is composed of rocks that are appropriately perforated and sees characters popping in and out of the literal holes.

Performances across the board carried the play throughout its duration, even if the general direction was generally boring and lacked adequate action throughout its long runtime. Trout Walker (freshman Gray Connor-Jones) and Elya Yelnats (sophomore Abby Silberman) are the funniest roles that elicited the most laughs from myself and the audience. Scenes of Mr. Sir toiling in his self misery, Kate Barlow’s devastatingly loud screams of grief and the somewhat-kind Mr. Pendanski flip-flopping between leading the kids and trying to cover up a possible murder are all standout moments.

The dynamic between Stanley and the quiet Zero (freshman Derek Matos) is generally underplayed compared to the original sources the play pulls from. However, in a powerful scene in Act II where Stanley carries Zero up the illuminated stairs in the middle of the audience, the bond is clearly visible.

Sadly, the plot, heavily adapted from the movie and novel, does lead to some highly boring scenes. Most notable are the various scenes of the main cast of hole-digging children just meandering about, reenacting scenes from the movie that were much more exciting with a score and camera cuts. I would’ve enjoyed the play more if the longer, less plot-relevant, dialogue-heavy scenes were cut down and characters were directed to be more physically active and less constrained.

As I sat in the audience watching actors getting fake smashed in the head with shovels, fake bleeding out as actors flowed through the cavernous set, my dissidence and confusion grew until it became something truly surreal. The emotions evoked by such a wild and somewhat bizarre production are hard to nail down, but “Holes” must be given its flowers for inviting such a strange energy to 22 Tappan.