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Theatre in Review: Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God (Playwrights Horizons)

Jen Tullock. Photo: Maria Baranova

Frances Reinhardt, the hurricane eye of Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God, is skilled at harvesting lucrative popular art from her embarrassing and/or traumatic past. Having fled her evangelical upbringing in Louisville, she has established herself as a writer, penning a well-received collection of comic essays about queer dating. Her follow-up work aims to be closer to the bone. At a promotional event for it, the moderator says, "The LA Times Book Review called her 'a searing and unapologetic adversary to a buttoned-up, God-centric America; an elegant and, yes, feminine addition to the male-dominated ranks of Pinker, Weinberg, and Hitchens'." (The play's slyly satiric knack for publishing world platitudes is flawless.)

But, as we learn, the book's title, Never the Twain Shall Meet: Losing God and Finding Myself, is ever so slightly disingenuous. In the play's complex scheme, the action unfolds in two simultaneous time frames. Frances gets a nervous call from her agent, Aubrey, warning that the church where she grew up is making noises about a possible lawsuit, due to something called "'wrongful likeness." (Jen Tullock, star and co-author, plays all the characters, and Aubrey is her most hilarious creation, braiding flattery, reassurance, and ringing alarm bells into a single head-snapping sentence: "I spoke to Jess Greenfield over at Hawthorn; a reminder that they are fucking obsessed with you; and I wouldn't say they're worried, but they are concerned. Okay?")

Onstage, we see Frances' journey home, where she confronts her family, her former church's pastoral staff, and, most importantly, her old friend Agnieszka, who may or may not be the source of trouble with the book. Meanwhile, on the sound system, we hear excerpts from that promotional event, including an amusingly hair-raising question-and-answer session ("As a cis-white woman, all due respect, who is this narrative for?"). Both aspects of the script are crucial. The longer Frances stays in Louisville, the more she feels stuck in a personal Rashomon, her vivid memories of physical and psychological abuse (including an exorcism to drive out her gay demons) at odds with the rather sad, often surprisingly tolerant world she encounters. And the queries and comments by the fans in her audience continue to nag at her, and us.

Tullock is a wiz at calling up characters on a dime; her gallery includes Frances' brother Eli, who hosts "backyard fellowships," while admitting, "I do reek of weed;" Clay, who tormented Frances in high school and now lives contentedly with his husband; Kenny, the unnervingly friendly Irishman who runs the church's mission operation, which, rather opportunistically, takes in Roman Catholic countries like Poland; Jeremy, the possibly too-slick pastor ("I'm gonna scoot a little closer to ya, feel like we're a little far away from each other"), and Raelynn, Frances' affection-craving, gummy-popping mother, who doesn't let a little thing like a tornado stop her from settling a few scores, for example informing her daughter, "You were mean to me."

Clay refers to Frances as a "queer culture hero" who escaped her stifling environment, turning her coming-out experience into literature. In reality, however, the past, haunting and treacherous, is always with her, a fact that becomes cruelly evident when Agnieszka challenges the book's portrait of their so-called romance. And, during a CNN interview, when Frances gets too candid about Agnieszka's effeminate, Andrew Lloyd Webber-loving son, she is forced to realize that, when it comes to hurting children, she can dish it out, too.

It's a heady piece of work, a solo show teeming with personalities and equipped with its own running commentary. Tullock, working with her co-writer Frank Winters, expertly plants a hundred-and-one hints that the truth behind Frances' memoir is much slipperier than she would like to admit. Under the direction of Jared Mezzocchi, himself a designer, the production has a style uniquely fitted to its method. Emmie Finckel's largely bare set is filled with surfaces for Stefania Bulbarella's projection/video design, which features prepared content (including announcements of each new character) plus live capture of Tullock. The images of the star split and multiply, an appropriate approach for a play in which memories betray, truth is elastic, and gaslighting is a popular pastime. Amith Chandrashaker's sensitive, highly directional lighting provides numerous alluringly theatrical looks. Evdoxia Ragkou's sound design includes zaps that, combined with blinder cues and flashes of video static, signal scene changes and shifts between characters. The preshow music also includes some cool jazz selections by the Krzysztof Komeda Quartet, an apt allusion to the church's Polish mission, which brought Agnieszka into Frances' life.

Indeed, the production is sufficiently dazzling that you might not immediately notice certain weaknesses in the play's structure. It's never clear how the church gets an advance copy of Frances' book, and, in any case, the wrongful likeness issue vanishes without explanation, replaced by more personal concerns. There's also some missing connective tissue between the abusers of Frances' recall and the people we see onstage; this is part of the authors' point, but, at times, the action is threatened by a credibility gap. Then again, the play benefits from its willingness to consider all points of view, even if they are less than flattering. We're caught in a whirlwind of conflicting memories and points of view, seeking, like Frances, to find a solid truth worth holding onto.

Most of all, Tullock and Winters have fabulous ears, especially for the passive-aggression that sometimes passes for Christian sympathy: "I know how much pain you're in," Frances recalls her exorcist telling her before submitting her to a mortifying and entirely unnecessary ritual. And the play candidly admits that leaving the church behind has left a hole inside Frances; as she admits, "there were some sweet parts of the deal." For example, she says, "I loved the singing. I mean, I go to sound baths, etc., now, I guess that's worship, I guess that's the same thing." Is it? It's a question that, one suspects, Frances is going to spend a lifetime figuring out. --David Barbour


(14 October 2025)

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