Double header: 'Hand to God' and 'The Audience'

On Saturday I saw “Hand to God” at the Booth Theatre and "The Audience" at the Schoenfeld Theatre.  Have you seen "Hand to God"?   If so, can you please explain to me what this play is about?  I was more than a bit in shock.  Not what I was expecting. That is not to say it wasn't a good play or a good experience.  I was just totally taken aback.

"Hand to God" opened this week to stupendous reviews.  So I thought I must see it.  A shy teenage boy named Jason (played by talented Steven Boyer) has a hand puppet named Tyrone that speaks for Jason – the inner voice of his most repressed thoughts, but that the loud, assertive, licentious and foul-mouthed Tyrone has no second thoughts about expressing.  Okay – this is an interesting concept to begin with: deep within our civilized public personas there are devilish and sexually repressed desires lurking within us that we are ashamed to acknowledge and speak about.  Jason’s recently widowed mother, Margery, is holding puppetry classes in the basement of a church in Texas.  I still do not understand what is meant by a 'puppet ministry'.

Margery's son (Jason) is one of her students but so is Timothy – the class bully and Jason’s rival for the affections of pretty Jessica (also a student).  Meanwhile, teenage Timothy is also fucking Jason’s mother on the side.  Timothy is all about sex – his whole demeanor, swagger and attitude is about lust.  Actor Michael Oberholtzer as Timothy reminded me of the character played by Jeff Bridges in ‘The Last Picture Show’.  Oberholtzer looks like a young Bridges too.  The church’s Pastor Greg (talented Marc Kudisch) is also interested in Margery – but she keeps

rebuffing his polite and caring advances.  Why? It is not because she has only been widowed for six months, but because she’s hot for Timothy and is not giving Timothy up just yet.  For  her, the minister can wait.  The sex Timothy and Margery have is what one would describe as hot, violent sex: ripping clothes off, no foreplay, push your face in her vagina and go for it!  I apologize here for being so crude.  But this is representative of this play.  Tyrone (the puppet), and thus Jason the puppeteer, becomes possessed by the Devil and tries to kill Timothy (blood everywhere) when Jason discovers what his Mom is up to.  Pastor Marc believes an exorcism might be necessary.  Either that or call 911.  But young Jessica decides that the best way to exorcise the devil from the sexually repressed Jason is to create her own female hand puppet (with remarkably large boobs) and have her hand puppet seduce sexually Jason’s hand puppet.  Okay – this sex scene between two puppets went on for a long time and they "performed" sex in ALL possible positions (all positions possible for 2 hand puppets).  I admit it was very funny indeed.

During the devil's possession of Jason's spirit the basement of the church is redesigned by Jason and Tyrone as Satan’s lair.  Barbie dolls crucified on crosses, Bibles torn to shreds, every sacrilegious symbol you can imagine and all of them covered in blood.  Pastor Greg walks in on Timothy and Margery going at it again on top of the pastor’s desk in his office.  Oh!  So that is why she isn’t interested in the nice pastor?  In the end Pastor Greg (the only sane character in this play) finally gets through to Jason (without resorting to exorcism) and gives him an ultimatum.  Either Jason must leave the church basement alone without Tyrone or he leaves with Tyrone and is banished forever.  Jason decides to cut his hand off (to kill Tyrone) but in the process also accidentally stabs his mother.  Pastor Marc will rush them both to the hospital.  Blood is everywhere.  This will not end nicely.  (Except that it is hinted that maybe Pastor Greg will finally win Margery in the end.)  Admittedly – the play was laugh after laugh after laugh.  Five very talented and funny actors.  But I confess I did not understand quite a lot.  Am I that dense?

Now “The Audience” was something else.  A beautiful production.  A drama with substance and a wonderful sense of humor.  I had a GREAT seat.  This two-act play went by in a flash.  When you are really enjoying a play it moves quickly.  I guess it is no surprise that the Queen (Dame Helen Mirren) did not like Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.  This was strongly suggested in this play.  I did not particularly like Judith Ivey as Thatcher but her entrance was quite funny.  Harold Wilson on the other hand was by all means the Queen’s favorite Prime Minister.  She was relaxed and familiar when with Wilson.  In one scene she even poured him a drink AND served the drink to him.

She allowed him to sit down in the room while she was still standing and did not seem to be bothered by this lapse of royal protocol in the least.  He would tease her about her German background, practically calling her family Nazis, and she laughed with him.  Those two were very close friends.  And Churchill thought he could con the young queen, but she out-witted him and proved that, although young, she was smart and cunning.

This was a terrific play.  A history lesson – yet still entertaining.  Of course all the conversations are just conjecture and imagination.  No one knows what conversations took place between Elizabeth and her PMs.  But if you were writing a play about Henry VIII or Elizabeth I the dialogue would be conjecture also.  If this theater season did not have “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” then “The Audience” would be this year’s Best Play.  But Dame Helen Mirren will definitely get a Tony as Best Actress.  It is a safe bet.  And the actor who played Wilson (Richard McCabe) will be a Tony winner also.  I’d bet the paycheck on it.

The sets were perfect and sumptuous.  Most of the

action took place in a reception room in Buckingham Palace - but also at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.  The costume changes were a magic act unto themselves.  The story is not told chronologically so Mirren's Queen went back and forth over a span of 60 years from a 25 year old Queen meeting with Winston Churchill for the first time to the present day Queen age 88 meeting with David Cameron.  The transformation of age, which included changes of wigs, costumes, posture and physical demeanor, was pure magic.  Indeed Helen Mirren is a great actress in her most iconic role.  If they ever do the movie of "The Audience" I would cast Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, Albert Finney as Winston Churchill and leave Helen Mirren and Richard McCabe in their roles as Queen Elizabeth II and Harold Wilson. Why mess with perfection?