THEATRE REVIEW: Hand to God

This show is best described as challenging: to producing companies, to performers, to directors, to designers, and especially to audiences. But worth it.

Feb 13, 2026

By Dennis Wemm
THEATRE CRITIC

Written by Robert Askins
Produced by UMW Theatre
Directed by Greg Stull
Fights and intimacy direction by Casey Kaleba; dialects and voice direction by Marc Williams; scenic design by Michael Benson; lighting design by Max Doolittle; costume and puppet design by Kevin McCluskey; sound design by Jon K. Reynolds

This show is best described as challenging: to producing companies, to performers, to directors, to designers, and especially to audiences.

It takes on a whole raft of BIG ISSUES in a fantasy format that is very much grounded in real emotional trauma. And it’s a very funny dark comedy as well. It seems that an extreme reaction to the threat of personal trauma, the threat of violence, and the danger of bad choices. This is a comic “shock of recognition”: we see the horrible result. We realize that no matter how good the institution or how decent the people involved, no matter how “safe” the environment, monstrosity is waiting around the corner. To quote Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Heavy stuff, right? What happens in the play?

Margery (played by Rob Willcox) and Jason (Lucas Bickford) are a widowed mother and son. Six months before the unseen father of the family died by eating-gluttony being a Christian deadly sin. Margery and Jason are stuck in middle stages of grief over the loss, struggling to integrate it into their lives. They have doubled down on their commitment to the local church. There they meet Pastor Greg who is no stranger to loss and loneliness. Pastor Greg has an inspiration to start a puppet ministry for the teens of his church.

Margery seems to have very little life outside of her raising Jason. (They live in Cypress, TX-the hometown of Mary Kay Ash of pink Cadillac fame.) They cling to each other, neither wanting to drive the other from their lives, but afraid to step beyond their assigned places.

Pastor Greg is a minister who genuinely cares and has a really tough job: helping Margery find a niche that doesn’t include singing or really anything that normally is supported by a church. And he has this puppet ministry project with no one to lead it. What can you do to comfort a widow when you’re really lonely yourself? Give her something to do that she knows nothing about; set some really tough deadlines, then you’ll just have to give her some personal guidance. Hmmm…

Jessica (Isabel Sowry) is a teen, Jason’s classmate, who is more comfortable listening and being a part of things rather than leading. She is well-spoken but not vivacious, smart and bookish (asked how she feels about the sock puppets she and Jason are making, she says that she prefers

Indonesian shadow puppets, something you don’t see every day in suburban Cypress). She samples life, but once she finds a connection to something (like Jason), she make a point to break out of her shell and pursue it.

Our last human is the pivot they’ll end up revolving around: Timmy (Ben Kline). He’s a rebel in a black jacket and tee shirt in church. He’s full of rage and intense passion that has nowhere to go. A need to connect that conflicts with an intense hatred of dishonesty. He’s determined to connect with everything and everyone but on his own terms. He’s crushing on Margery in a big way, wants nothing to do with Jessica or Jason.

The catalyst for the big crunch that will happen to these folks are puppets. Sock puppets made by the teens for a performance that Pastor Greg has scheduled for the next Sunday. Maybe a simple Bible story. The group has a massive project to put together but Margery is not up to leading and other than the puppets no one knows anything about actually performing. Then at a rehearsal Jason shows off his puppet Tyrone and gives him a voice. At first the voice is very much Jason’s own repressed self, but he starts to be able to say things that Jason would never be able to say.

Jason is free. If he really needs to express something, he lets Tyrone take the responsibility. Jessica is fascinated. Margery is shocked and pleased at first, and then troubled. What’s she going to do with Jason being free like this? This has nothing to do with Bible stories. Timmy is kind of lost: saying things that shock is his main tactic for shutting the Powers That Be up. He gets really defensive. What to do with the uncaged Jason that lives through Tyrone? Timmy takes alone time with Margery as an opportunity to express his love, and his lust.

Jason and Margery, freaking out in the car going home. Margery tries to get Jason to talk normally, to feed him nuggets and shut Tyrone up. To keep things as they are. Jason is torn between his newfound freedom and his love for his mom and defunct dad. He carries out an act of violence— on Tyrone. And the story begins to spin out of control. And the church gets wrecked. Profanely, anarchically, bloodily, spiritually, blasphemously wrecked.

Does everything work out in the end? Well, yeah, the plot resolves in a fairly realistic way for a play that is part parable. There are lessons learned the hard way and no one really comes out unscathed. Be prepared to see a “hero’s journey” fantasy story, but you may end up realizing that the dragon the hero must face is himself.

Did I like the production? Yes, I think it works well. The typical Sunday school classroom already has a lot of cartoonish elements so the parable fits pretty naturally. Most of the moments in other spaces (a car, an office) are played with theatrical lighting so that we have the comfort of realism. It keeps us off balance and forces us to focus on the action. The cast plays well together forming a strong ensemble.

Margery is neither victim nor saint, she’s a woman who never counted on having to decide everything on her own, but she has no grounding for even normal issues let alone potentially demonic performance toys. Willcox grounds her acting with a realism that makes her frustration and fear easy to believe. There’s a lot of patriarchal control she’s arguing with: her marriage and then Greg’s obvious but innocent come-ons irritate her. She has a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of time, so she reacts to relationship issues with food bribes.

Lucas Bickford finds Jason’s deeper character in a role that could be simply played as a “nerdy teen.” Jason is smart and perceptive, trying to balance his own needs and wants with society’s expectations. When the expectations try to control and suppress his needs Tyrone give his needs their voice. Tyrone becomes a personification of his id in the face of Pastor Greg’s superego. Bickford shows his understanding of what’s happening while never losing the sense that he’s responsible for most of it.

The play’s pivotal (and most affecting) scene takes place in his mom’s car and it removes the other’s characters influence, leaving these two to battle over Tyrone. It also provides the crisis that causes an emotional dam to burst in Jason and propels Tyrone to the ascendancy. Two people in chairs, in dim light, pretending to be in a car bring the insoluble conflict to a head. Nice job.

Pastor Greg could easily turn into a stereotype. Hilbert manages to skirt the issue of Greg’s sincerity by keeping him reasonable but very real. He treats life as a sermon to be taught based on the logical outcome of his ethics. When his own internal Tyrone starts to control him he tamps it right down. He never says “get thee behind me” but his angry efforts to control others say as much.

Timmy is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. He angrily defies hypocrisy and the control of society with all of the regalia of a rebel but it’s mostly bluster and posturing. He has no control over his life. Society keeps shoving him into a role, he dresses the part and acts out but Kline also manages to express the pain and need he feels when he’s denied.

Sowry’s Jessica has some of the best moments of the show. A lot of the time she quietly sits and watches the dramas play out around her, always listening and deciding what her role is going to be. She consciously mimics Jason’s use of Tyrone to be the bad guy in creating her puppet Jolene. The puppet emerges as a bad girl even bolder than Tyrone’s bad. In doing so she gains a boyfriend.

After Act I the play becomes a straight up monster fest as Tyrone takes over. And lessons are learned.

I mentioned that the setting, props and lighting support the play’s unreality. They’re coolly cartoonish, and the very effective costumes reflect the same aesthetic.

Finally, the puppets themselves: they evolve like the characters do. Both Tyrone and Jolene are seen as sock puppets with bulgy eyes from the beginning (Timmy’s too cool to puppet). However, they change radically throughout the action and become more “monsterized,” growing teeth and (ahem) secondary sexual characteristics. There are times when violent interaction happens between Tyrone and the “real” people with real consequences but I was left confused how the damage portrayed was done.

If you like your parables dark, and strong language and simulated sex and violence are not a problem for you, you really need to see the play. If anything listed does bother you, you should sit it out. All I can say is, I laughed and thoroughly bought into both the script and the production.

Dennis Wemm is a retired professor of theatre and communication, having taught and led both departments at

Glenville State College for 34 years. In his off time he was president and sometimes Executive Director of the West Virginia Theatre Conference, secretary and president of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, and generally enjoyed a life in theatre.