2025: Hand to God by Robert Askins

 

 Hand to God by Robert Askins. Presented by Everyman Theatre at ACT Hub at Causeway Hall. 10 December – 20 December 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Dec 12

Directed by Jarrad West

Cast
Michael Cooper as Jason (and the puppet Tyrone)
Amy Kowalczuk as his mother Margery
Lachlan Ruffy as Pastor Greg
Meaghan Stewart as Jason’s girlfriend Jessica
William 'Wally' Allington as Timothy, one-time school acquaintance.


Hand to God is an American play: embarrassingly funny; a crude satire. Yet, in the final scene of a young man’s mental breakdown, we see a reflection of America this century – even unto Donald Trump.

Though first produced in 2011, the teenager with his devil of a hand-puppet is an image that inevitably brings to mind that over-the-top ham actor’s extremities in his first Presidential Term 2017-2020, and currently.

Tyrone with Michael Cooper as Jason 
in Hand to God, Everyman Theatre 2025

 The point about the play is that it’s very funny – I would say terribly funny.  AI says The play is described as a "blasphemous black comedy (with puppets!)" that explores faith and morality and is intended for adult audiences due to its mature content, coarse language, and sexual references.  So, don’t take your chidren.

 

William 'Wally' Allington as Timothy, Meaghan Stewart as Jessica, Michael Cooper as Jason

 More – it really means, don’t take the children to America, where the diabolical Donald has Trumped – like Tyrone trumps Jason, destroying his faith in family –  even at the level of our international family.

In their small-town Cypress, Texas, Marjorie’s attempts to stay true to her marriage vows after her husband’s death, distracted by entertaining the faith community with puppets which go crazy, represent a world ruled by the dictates of an entertainer who believes he is the real thing.

Fortunately we still have the writers and performing artists we need to help us at least understand ourselves a bit better.

This is where the puppets and the terrific performances by Everyman come into the picture.

Once upon a time, many years ago when Drama was still not an independent school subject, I experimented with teachers of disaffected young teenagers using drama to assist with their education.  Using just one hand as theirself and the other as a puppet, what the hands said to each other, about behaviour issues, for example, could result in a new awareness about actions and consequences.  If the situation was managed by the teachers carefully and positively, of course.

In Hand to God, son Jason’s emotional dilemmas about his mother Margery’s struggles to find her way out of the grief and loss of her husband, while facing up to his own attraction to Jessica – and including the threat from Timothy’s sexual intentions towards both women – is simply not a situation that can be managed.

This is because they, including Paster Greg who is attracted, probably genuinely, to Margery, are all enclosed in an emotional prison.  There is no escape hatch; nor any independent non-interested outsider to help them manage.  Even in my teaching role, as my experiments showed, a successful change was difficult to achieve.

So in performing Jason, as he, as himself, talks with and argues with his puppet, who is also Jason – and in doing so instantly switching voice, mannerisms and feelings from one character to the other – Michael Cooper achieves an extraordinary feat as an actor.  From the very beginning, sitting alone (but with Tyrone) before any other characters have come on stage, I could respond at once to him, not as a puppeteer, but as a real person with some kind of special relationship with his puppet.

That degree of professionalism built throughout the cast and makes this production of Hand to God as good to see and engage with as I can imagine.

I fear, though, for America – and therefore for all the world – because Trump plays himself as Tyrone all the time, never revealing what we may hope is a real commonsense character hidden in himself.

The result is that too many people laugh – as we certainly did last night at The Hub – at the entertainment, and don’t realise that Marjery’s hope that her puppet show will create peace and harmony can’t succeed without true emotional intelligence.

The play ends deliberately without making it clear that the inordinate mess in the Church Hall, where everything is torn up and scattered everywhere, can never be put back in order.

Or maybe we might think that Margery’s final hug with Jason is an OK sign for the future.

For America, I guess, we haven’t got to the end of the play yet – but I’ve stopped laughing.  This is serious.

And I thank Jarrad West and everyone in Everyman Theatre.  

See Hand to God, but be careful of your mental puppets.

Michael Cooper, Amy Kowalczuk and Lachlan Ruffy
in the final scene of Hand to God, Everyman Theatre 2025

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra