What Evil Lurks in the Hands of Men

Hand to God at the Booth Theatre

 

(L-R): Sarah Stiles, Tyrone, and Steven Boyer in Hand to God.

            Robert Askins, the writer of the new dark, terrifying and enormously funny Broadway comedy Hand to God, works as a bartender.

            By day, Mr. Askins might happen by a matinee performance of his new play at the Booth Theatre, where a terrifically talented cast and some deeply disturbed hand puppets are spewing profanities and rattling off off-color jokes before an audience of over 750.  By night he tends bar at a Tex-Mex eatery in Brooklyn, where he walks back and forth to work daily and, he says, still cannot afford a ticket to his own play.

            In the annals of artists cheated by the very hands that grabbed for their work, Mr. Askins’ predicament does not rank up there with that of, say, Van Gogh.  But anyone who sits through Hand to God and emerges, a little under two hours later, with their sides aching from laughter, will certainly think it an injustice.

            Mr. Askins, a native Texan who moved to New York in 2005, uses touches of religious autobiography and the hypocrisy of society to paint a picture of a troubled teenage boy, Jason (the virtuosic Steven Boyer) whose mother, Margery (Geneva Carr), plunges them both into the world of Christian puppetry at the local church after the untimely death of Jason’s father, a depressed binge-eater who six months hence has died of a heart attack.  Margery teaches puppetry classes in the church basement thanks to the patronage of Pastor Greg (Mark Kudisch), who wants in Margery’s pants.  Her students number three—Jason, who is unsure about the situation but surprisingly good with his puppet, Tyrone; Jessica (the nicely peppy Sarah Stiles), a motivated puppetry enthusiast for whom Jason bears a torch; and Timothy (Michael Oberhaltzer), a delinquent who harbors a crush on Margery.  All seems well, if insipid, until Tyrone, he of purple felt and orange tuft of hair, is seemingly possessed by the devil.  A surreal nightmare of vengeance and sin ensues, and every minute of it is funny as hell.

            If this seems unlikely, it’s the cast who pulls it off well enough to be more than viable, especially Mr. Boyer, who essentially gives a dual performance as the nervous Jason and the demonic Tyrone.  Though he performs no ventriloquism, he manages to give each character a distinct life of its own.  Often one can find him poised with Tyrone arched over him like an avenging serpent, divesting invective at whomever is unlucky enough to cross his path, including, most frequently, Jason himself.  His turn is mesmerizing, alternating hysterical bouts between Jason and Tyrone with strenuous battles for control.  One particular bout of puppet sex with Jessica’s hand puppet, in particular, outdoes anything Avenue Q ever had to offer.  (Ms. Stiles is a wonderfully game actress and a pleasant stage presence.)  Mr. Boyer could never steal the show because it was his, or, rather, Tyrone’s to begin with.  The play is never as interesting when he’s not on stage.

            The B-plot, such as it is, deals with the pseudo-love triangle between Margery, Timothy, and Pastor Greg.  Mr. Askins’ writing is weakest here, and can often devolve into moralizing treatises on right and wrong or else treacly declarations of love that are repeatedly rejected, until the action becomes less funny than painful.  But it’s all worth it when Timothy and Margery consummate their mutual attraction with a hell-raising, vandalizing fervor, which raises gale-force laughter from the audience.

            The traps that Mr. Askins fall into are those any playwright, even one as talented as he, might encounter in their early career.  Where he tries to make points about losing oneself in tragedy, he can often seem almost incoherent.  Jokes get the play back on track, but they’re not his only strength—near the end of the play, when Jason’s personality begins to merge with Tyrone’s or vice versa, the complexity of this dark, dark comedy becomes apparent.  Writing like this, that can make us laugh and horrify us and make us think about the less pleasant parts of our nature, is what one might call a one-way ticket out of Brooklyn bartending.