Review: HAND TO GOD at Little Theatre, University Of Adelaide

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Thursday 17th November 2022.

Hand to God, by American playwright Robert Askins, is the funniest, most disreputable thing I think I've ever witnessed. Presented by the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild, the non-stop open-throated laughter of the audience in the Little Theatre must be the loudest sound ever to have struck the rafters of the venue. It was only the short breaks for scene changing that gave us time to breathe, and probably prevented cardiac arrest in the older members of the audience.

Margery, Emily Branford, and her son Jason, Matt Houston, are dealing with the trauma of their husband and father's death six months before the story starts. She is sublimating her feelings by running a puppet workshop in a room attached to her church. Jason is dealing with the loss, and also the confusing sexual and emotional issues prone to young men. His only company, his confidante, is his sock puppet, Tyrone.

Now when Tyrone speaks we see Jason's mouth moving, but are what we hear Jason's deepest thoughts that can only be expressed by transference to the puppet, or is Tyrone possessed by the devil? We're deep in the deep south of the USA, so he's probably demonic. There is a horror tradition of murderous dolls with lives of their own and malicious intent, but never delivered with this level of sexual depravity. There's no room for innuendo, there are buckets of 'outuendo', graphic, explicit, unconstrained by conventions of good behaviour. "I suppose there'll be more inappropriateness in the second half", said one patron queuing for the bar. Oh yes, there was.

Margery is being courted by the local pastor, played by Brendan Cooney, but isn't interested. Little does she know that Timothy, Tom Tassone, the 16-year-old school bully has something for her, in his pants. Innocent Jessica, Laura Antoniazzi, a member of the puppet club, is Jason's love interest.

Matt Houston has won critical acclaim for his acting, and he knows the Little Theatre stage well, but as Jason and Tyrone, he reaches new levels of capability. The work he put into becoming such a puppeteer pays off magnificently. Emily Branford as Margery is a luxury casting. She catches the vulnerability of the mother, and her deep southern fried accent reinforces her emotional frailty. This makes the sex and bondage scene with the high school bully even more confronting. Tom Tassone, whom I've admired in The Laramie Project, and his work with Butterfly Theatre and The Adelaide Rep, is a serious physical force on that stage. Laura Antoniazzi is sweet and innocent until she falls under Jason/Tyrone's spell. Ever wondered how sock puppets have sex? Wonder no more. Brendan Cooney, a well-known Adelaide performer, makes his Theatre Guild debut as Pastor Greg. He does bewildered very well. The program needs to be more explicit about the puppet makers, who they are, and the witchcraft that went into making them.

Director, Nick Fagan, confesses that he wanted to present the play having read only the reviews of the original American production, and he's handpicked the perfect cast for a play that does have a deep emotional layer, under strata of inappropriate remarks and behaviour delivered with manic intent in the cauldron of the Little Theatre. The opening night audience could have had its own cast list. Producers, directors, theatre company managers and a handful of our best actors were there. The grapevine had been well tugged. Rumours had circulated. The audience response had a component of the complicity between audience members and their mates on stage, and there was at least one person whose hysterical laughter caused several nearby patrons to move their seats, but mostly that gale, that tsunami of laughter, was a response to the shocking behaviour on stage.

In one of his songs, Tom Lehrer sings about smut. "As the judge decreed, the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense, to be smut it must be utterly without redeeming social importance." Is there redeeming social importance in Hand to God? Who cares?

In writing this review, I've invented a word and written lines I hadn't expected. I've barely described the astonishing plotline. Can I recommend the play, of course, not to everyone, but if you want a riot of laughter or just tips on sock puppets, see this show. Hand to God, I swear.