You’re probably familiar with the idea of someone having an
evil twin, that part of a person’s personality, mostly repressed, that
fantasizes about being gauche, irreverent and causing general mayhem just for
the hell of it. Well, what if that twin was attached to your hand in the form
of a puppet named Tyrone, a foul-speaking, lubricious creature (think of a
Muppet gone very bad) that often controls what you do and say? That’s one of
the premises of Robert Askins play, “Hand to God,” which recently opened at
TheaterWorks in Hartford. The Tony-nominated play that first appeared on
Broadway in 2015 and currently under the direction of Tracy Brigden, is really
an exercise in “acting out,” loosely defined as problematic behavior that is
physically and verbally aggressive and often destructive of property (all of
which is in the play). As such, one would think that the play would seek to
reveal the reasons for such behavior and offer to resolve them in some way.
Whether it does so or not remains to be seen.
The set-up is that Margery (Lisa Velten Smith) is trying to
coordinate a puppet show for Pastor Greg (Peter Benson) for an upcoming church
service. To accomplish this she has enlisted her son, Jason (Nick LaMedica) as
well as Jessica (Maggie Carr) and a somewhat rebellious Timmy (Miles G.
Jackson). The play opens, after a somewhat disjointed, pseudo-philosophical
monologue by the puppet, Tyrone, with a haphazard rehearsal in the church’s
basement that quickly reveals that Jason is under the control of (possessed
by?) his puppet. However, sexual tension is also rife. The good pastor has the
hots for Margery, whose husband, an apparently less-than-fulfilling spouse,
died of a heart attack six months ago. But Timmy also lusts after Margery, and
her son may have some strong Oedipal problems. Then there’s Margery herself,
rife with sexual frustration. The only character who seems relatively
uninflamed by libido is Jessica.
As the play unfolds, is any of it believable? Well, it all
depends on whether or not you can suspend your disbelief. What is definitely
believable is that Jason is using Tyrone to say (and do) aggressive, assaultive
things that the mild-mannered young man would normally shy away from. Whatever
part of this “acting out” you buy is much to the credit of LaMedica, who in
lightning-bolt fashion switches back and forth from dutiful son to
semi-sociopath. It’s an amazing performance, given that he has to convey two
different personalities – introvert and extreme, foul-mouthed extrovert – all
while manipulating the puppet on his hand, which he does with a great deal of
dexterity.
The believability factor becomes a bit strained when we come
to Margery – Jessica Rabbit’s “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way” comes to
mind. Well, Velten Smith is a good actress (she’s reprising the role she played
at City Theatre in Pittsburgh) asked to play an over-the top character – “She’s
just written that way.” Margery has several screws loose, but we’re never
really sure why, and she has her own way of acting out sans puppet – she is
prone to tirades, hissy fits and what might be called revenge sex. Her
character’s underlying motives seem somewhat hidden. We’re not talking Chekhov
here.
Benson, as Pastor Greg, is not given much to work with by
Askins, but he uses what he’s given to bring to life the somewhat self-effacing
pastor, and Carr has even less “meat” in her character, Jessica, though she
does pull off a rather funny (if over-long) puppet-sex scene (it’s a
been-there-done-that moment for anyone who’s seen “Avenue Q”). Jackson, as
Timmy, is all false bravado and ruled by tumescence. Do you buy the scenes
between Velten Smith’s character and Jackson’s that lead to multiple trysts? To
do so we’d have to understand a bit more about Margery and her back-story,
something Askins alludes to but never really deals with. Why the rage; why the
lust; what’s her problem? Is Timmy really that sexually desirable (doesn’t seem
so – he’s just a punk kid looking to get laid).
To embrace “Hand to God,” it might be useful to conceive of
the entire evening as allegorical, with the characters manifesting aspects of
their psyches, interacting on a stage that is dictated by the subconscious.
Otherwise, the events in the play, as they devolve to a certain amount of
violence, including self-mutilation, challenge credibility. This allegorical
take is reinforced by the play’s closing moments, which has Tyrone appear in a
video (compliments of Luke Cantarella, who also designed the very functional
set) to suggest that we, as human beings, might be better off if we shed the
puppets we use to present ourselves to the world (and protect our fragile egos)
and simply be the frail, flawed humans we really are.
“Hand to God” runs through August
26. For tickets or more information call 860-527-7838 or go to www.theaterworkshartford.org
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