This review contains spoilers.
If somebody had told me they had just seen a play with sock puppet sex, angsty teenage boys and violent ear-biting, my natural assumption would be to assume they were returning from some sort of edgy comedy. But at the conclusion of Wirtz Center’s “Hand to God,” a show featuring all of the above and more, I didn’t feel like I was walking out of a comedy.
Beyond the sex jokes and onstage mayhem, there is far more to digest in “Hand to God.”
Written by Robert Askins and directed by Communication MFA Student Jamel Booth, “Hand to God” follows Jason (Akinle Armand), Timothy (Bryan Baumer) and Jessica (Louise Sims), three teenagers who make up the puppet club at a small town church.
The club is supervised by Jason’s mother, Margery (Juno Azuz Zacher), a grieving widow who has been asked by their pastor, Greg (Shahzeb Shah), to prepare a religious puppet show before the following Sunday.
From the first scene, it becomes clear that there isn’t anything overly “holy” about these characters, despite being gathered in a church.
Jason is a quieter guy with eyes for Jessica, and he’s also grappling with the loss of his father. Timothy is an obnoxious, foul-mouthed teen with no respect for authority, who comes to the puppet club while his mother is at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Despite his bad behavior, Timothy is romantically interested in Margery, whom Pastor Greg also wants to marry. Jessica, who seems to be the most level-headed in the show, may have had a history with Timothy, which only makes Jason despise him more.
At the center of the show is Tyrone, Jason’s puppet, who develops a perverted, devilish mind of his own. Both Tyrone and Jason are played by Armand, who puts his vocal wits on full display as he rapidly switches between the demented voice of Tyrone and the innocent character of Jason.
In Tyrone’s first evil moment, he interrupts Jason while chatting up Jessica, and blurts out wildly perverted comments about his fantasies with her, causing her to run away. From there, the chaos Tyrone causes in Jason’s life only intensifies.
There were moments in this show where I had no idea whether I should laugh, drop my jaw in shock or do both at the same time. In one of Margery’s most neurotic moments, she and Timothy find themselves in a church classroom alone, where they begin destroying furniture and posters to let out their internal frustrations.
Their rage quickly escalates into kinky sexual desire. Margery, an adult woman, seduces the teenager into a hard-to-watch makeout session that continues offstage in an interaction that we can only hear.
Zacher and Baumer’s dedication to portraying the brokenness of these characters leads to a scene so twisted you feel like you shouldn’t be watching it.
This affair later comes back to bite both of them; Margery figuratively and Timothy, literally.
The most admirable part of this performance was how authentic each character’s progression into insanity felt.
Whether it’s the teenage angst of Timothy, the desperate connection between a widowed mother and her teenage son or the struggle for power between Jason and Tyrone, this show sparked reactions beyond what I expected from a comedy performance. If this is a dark comedy, it’s certainly more dark than comedy.
During all the bloody chaos that occurs in Act 2, Jessica blurts out a question that’s worth considering: “Is it the puppet that’s possessed or Jason?”
The irony of “Hand to God” is that, despite how appalling they find the evil puppet’s behavior, most of these characters are in no position to judge right from wrong. The only difference between Jason’s devil and everyone else’s is that Jason’s is a living, talking puppet.
This isn’t a show about possessed puppets; it’s a show about who we blame when we’re at our worst. Has the devil taken us over, or have we lost our moral compass on our own doing? Do we need exorcisms or support systems?
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