Hand to God: puppets from hell are heavenly
29 Apr 2019

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Kristina Ruddick

Hand to God successfully, and outrageously, combines two favourite genres: the southern gothic melodrama and obscenity-spouting killer puppets. The introduction by the puppet Tyrone, outlines playwright Robert Atkins' central thesis in biblical terms, utilizing ever escalating profanities. From there the audience is plunged into a maelstrom of seething sex, violence and felt. It is delightful.  

Marjorie (Nicole Underhay) is attempting to recover from her husband's untimely death by conducting a Sunday school puppet workshop. Her son Jason (Frank Cox-O'Connell) and Tyrone are battling for dominance and pining for fellow workshop puppeteer Jessica (Amy Keating). Pastor Greg (Ted Dykstra) and Timothy (Francis Melling) are both lusting after Marjorie, but with one in the midst of a crisis of faith and the other in a crisis of puberty, Marjorie initially decides to stick with Jesus. And then all hell breaks loose. Literally.

The surprises are part of the fun so telling more could potentially spoil the laughter. Or dampen it from uproarious to hilarious. Even the set by Anahita Dehbonehie is filled with inventive sight gags and surprises that earn laughs as well as admiration. Scaling Hand to God down from a Broadway stage to the extremely intimate Coal Mine Theatre must have been a challenge, but director Mitchell Cushman (Dr Silver, Mr Burns) makes a virtue of the set changes and inventiveness to give a puppet show feel to the proceedings. And to keep the focus on the virtuoso performances, both human and puppet.   

Underhay has the toughest job whiplashing from tragic bible-thumping widow to a woman possessed by carnal desires of the taboo variety. She plays the transitions for comedy but then commits to the extremes to a frightening fabulous degree. All while somehow remaining realistically maternal. Dykstra (The Father, Rumours) is a tragicomic pining milquetoast man of the cloth who finds his backbone briefly and struggles to hold the centre against the onslaught of evil. His interactions with Tyrone are a master class in the double take and arched eyebrow.

Melling takes the horny angry adolescent male and layers in confusion and sadness. He matches Underhay in bravado and BDSM fervour, all while remaining fundamentally, tragically innocent. He also, for a character supposedly on the less intelligent side, has the best one-liners including one that trashes the muppets and brings down the house. Keating who initially plays sweet and knowing stops the show, literally, in the midst of a graphic gratuitous puppet sex extravaganza that makes Avenue Q look like, well, like a Sunday school production. Of all the repressed desires that explode, hers are the classiest and the funniest.

Cox-O'Connell (Rose, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet) can add puppeteer to his resume. He and Tyrone function as duo with again, lots of surprises, sight gags and gross-outs. Cox-O'Connell has multiple whiplash personality changes and they all read true rendering his climactic moments heartrending and tragic. The sweet Jason is all wide eyes and leaking hormones, Tyrone is, as he proclaims, possibly the devil. And we always know who is in possession of Cox-O'Connell's physicality. At one moment, in a semi-blackout, he stumbles offstage and, wordless and with his back to the audience, we fully understand Jason.  

Thematically the script stretches a little too far in search of profundity. The point is made beautifully long before the ending, and when there is a bobble-head Jesus, an Exorcist gag that is sidesplitting, oodles of explicit violence played for that unease beyond laughter, a rainbow flag on the church wall to remind us of the dangers of repression of the vilest sort, and the marvellous puppets by Marcus Jamin (The Daisy Theatre, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Mr Burns), profundity is practically redundant.   

While the Coal Mine Theatre is an ideal venue for Hand to God, with a mere 75 seats it is also barely able to contain it. And it is not going to be able to contain the number of people who want to see this production. The majority of the run is already sold out but anyone wanting to get up close and personal with sexy  demonic puppets, and extraordinary actors who are the same, should act fast. As Pastor Greg admonishes, "You needed work for idle hands, I gave you puppets!"