Today in 2015 at Broadway's Booth Theatre, Robert Askins' Hand to God celebrated opening night, kicking off what would become a nine-month, 311-performance run.
The play, a dark comedy that is at different turns as hilarious as it is gruesome, follows young Jason in a small religious town in Texas. After his mom passes away, Jason finds purpose in the puppet ministry club that she used to run. The only trouble is that the puppet Jason devises, a simple sock puppet named Tyrone, develops an incendiary personality of its very own that Jason has no control over, despite being on his own hand.
Reviewing the play's Broadway run in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood said Tyrone "really inspires goose bumps as he unleashes a reign of terror on...Jason and everyone in his orbit. ... [H]e's also flat-out hilarious, spewing forth acid commentary that will turn those goose bumps into guffaws."
But Hand to God wasn't merely for cheap laughs. Askins used the wild story to make some sharp commentary on what is often lurking just past the surface in devout religious communities. "But Hand to God is not a horror story, or at least not a horror story in which the forces of evil are supernatural," Isherwood wrote in his review. "What makes the play so sneakily resonant is how Mr. Askins exposes the base impulses, the sexual, self-destructive, potentially violent ones, that just about everyone harbors to some small degree." What remains in the shadows in real life, in Askins' play, come involuntarily screaming out of a seemingly harmless hand puppet.
The play started at Ensemble Studio Theatre in 2011, coming back for an encore run the next year. In 2015, the play came to the Lucille Lortel Theatre Off-Broadway via MCC Theater, and it was this staging that made the jump to Broadway. Throughout its journey to Broadway, Jason was played by Steven Boyer, who would ultimately win a 2014 Lucille Lortel Award and get a Tony nomination for his performance. The play received five Tony nominations, including Best Play.
Fellow early original cast member Geneva Carr stayed with the production all the way to Broadway, too, playing Jason's mom Margery. They were joined in the final Off-Broadway run and Broadway bow by Sarah Stiles, Michael Oberholtzer, and Marc Kudisch. During the Broadway run, Kudisch was eventually replaced by Bob Saget, the TV star and comedian's final Broadway performance.
Since the show's Broadway run, the play has become frequently produced at regional theatres, and got an Olivier nominated London debut in 2016.
Take a look back at the Broadway bow of Hand to God in the gallery below.
Learn what other theatrical happenings occurred on April 7 by visiting the Playbill Vault.
