The hilarious and provocative Hand to God centers on shy, inquisitive student Jason, who finds an outlet for his burgeoning creativity at the Christian Puppet Ministry in the devoutly religious, relatively quiet small town of Cypress, Texas. Jason's complicated relationships with the town pastor, the school bully, the girl next door and-most especially-his mother are thrown into further upheaval when Jason's hand puppet Tyrone-once soft-spoken-takes on a shocking and dangerously irreverent personality all its own. As Tyrone's influence over Jason steadily grows, Hand to God explores the startlingly fragile nature of faith, morality, and the ties that bind us.
Hand to God will feature the complete cast of the hit 2014 MCC Theater production: Steven Boyer as Jason/Tyrone; Geneva Carr, in her Broadway debut, as Margery; Tony Award nominee Marc Kudisch as Pastor Greg; Sarah Stiles as Jessica; and Michael Oberholtzer, in his Broadway debut, as Timmy. Boyer reprises the role for which he has been honored with an Obie Award, the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play, the Actors' Equity Association Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Newcomer, and a citation from the Drama League for Distinguished Performance, among other awards.
Boyer so skillfully separates the roles of awkward teen and possessed puppet you can forget you're watching just one performer. Carr, too, is super-likable as a woman susceptible to bad choices and blind to her son's struggles...There are stand-alone scenes in 'Hand to God' that will floor you....Structurally, 'Hand to God' never quite adds up to the sum of its brilliant parts. There are only so many ways we can be told that faith isn't quite enough, and that we need to find specific ways of dealing with our problems...'Hand to God' helped me finally see the allure in using a puppet to express feelings. It offers distance from ourselves, enabling us to say what we mean-what we feel-without tripping over the baggage that makes it hard to be a human: Will what I say hurt feelings? Is it morally dicey? Is it perverted? There's obviously some Tyrone in all of us. Praise the devil he's found a way to be heard?
There are many reasons to celebrate the arrival on Broadway of Hand To God. It wraps its seriousness in a veneer of XXX-rated irreverence. I don't know which I want to do more: Sing Hallelujah - or wash its dirty little mouth out with soap...Smaller in scale, song-free and purposely looking as though it was produced on a Cookie Monster-sale budget, Hand To God is a Book Of Revelations about what should be possible on Broadway, that one-time cultural bazaar that has come more and more to resemble a high-priced mausoleum...the best reason to make your way to the Booth Theatre is to see the most astonishing pair of performances by a single actor since Nina Arianda's Broadway debut in Venus In Fur...Praise Ensemble Studio Theater for the development production, MCC Theater for pushing Hand To God to the next level and a pack of producers led by Kevin McCollum for believing there's a place on Broadway for transgressive humor.
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