Reviews of "Bless Your Heart"
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‘Bless Your Heart’ not to be missed!
by Sami Zahringer Ojai Valley News Photo by Stephen Adams 
“Bless Your Heart,” now playing its world premiere at Ojai Art Center Theater, goes right to the heart of the culture wars between religion and secularism, knowledge and faith. It pulls no punches, but with a tender, hilarious, invigorating script, it manages to transcend the warring rhetoric and tell the story of an ideologically opposed family not at peace with itself but trying hard to be when mutual understanding is thin on the ground.
The story is a dramatized autobiographical moment in the life of the playwright, Richard Camp of Ojai, a man born in North Carolina to an extremely evangelical family, who saw education as his way out. He grabbed it, ran with it, and became an Emmy-nominated writer and director, living a life of learning and ideas thousands of miles from his origins both geographically and ideologically. It’s revealing, intensely thought provoking, searingly honest, and very, very funny. Camp is represented in the play as Thomas (David Nelson Taylor), a college professor home to attend the wedding of his 17-year-old brother to an obviously pregnant teen, denying her pregnancy. Nobody wants the youngsters to get married. Thomas is thrust back into the Southern Baptist world of his youth where pictures of Jesus and Elvis hang side by side on the wall, family members regularly quote the Bible, and his unhappy, overbearing mother admonishes him with “Don’t use words bigger than my bottom.” Martha, Thomas’ mother, is unforgettable. A woman run largely to seed in comparison with her pretty, bubbly, 11-times-married sister, Lucille, she is on nine different medications for anxiety, diabetes, thyroid problems (“Yeah, your thyroid’s too heavy!”) and keeps a gun next to her TV. She is a complicated, intellectually alive figure of razor-sharp wit, but extremely constricted worldview, who has never had any education outside of literally interpreted Bible-reading and daytime TV. She is self-pitying, self- sabotaging, demanding and desperate for love. Somehow, all of this is played with both subtlety and force by Susan Kelejian in a masterful portrayal of anxious, disappointed, self-excoriating and, for that matter, everybody-else-excoriating, motherhood. Martha and Thomas’ relationship is mutually baffling and frustrating, but marked with love and the longing to be understood. One of the most scouring and powerful scenes in the play happens when Thomas’s younger brother, John David, explodes at Thomas in a blistering indictment for abandoning him. Where Thomas got out to explore his options as soon as he could, he left no option for his younger brother but to stay at home and look after their mother. The shock, shame and self-realization Thomas feels could not have the audience-hushing power it does without an exceptional actor playing John David. Chance Kelejian plays this sweet, protective boy of great decency with rangy, loping, self-effacing good humor, so when he blows up into a painful adolescent rage of resentment and loss, we keenly feel and are taken aback at the burden he’s been carrying on his young shoulders. We suddenly see depths and facets of John David in a way that he would never reveal to the world outside. We feel the strains and constraints of family ties, we see his fierce loyalty and, for all Thomas’ exhortations to get an education, how that, for John David, is meaningless and ridiculous given the realities he has to take care of. We see the very real limitations of poor Southern youth and their powerful need to manage their expectations accordingly. John David’s fiancée, Charlene, is played with affecting ditziness but great dimension by Kisea Katikka, who hints at a grittiness and practicality in Charlene's disposition. Some of the sharpest, funniest lines in the play are given to Martha’s sister, Lucille. Bottle-blonde, bouncy, trim and particular, Julie Denney Hamann breathes exuberant life into them, deploying compliments and criticisms alike with breathless, direct Southern charm wielded like a lace-covered iron fist. No punches are pulled, but what a delightful way to be assaulted! Lucille’s vivacity highlights Martha’s depression that only seems to begin to lift slightly with the return of Thomas's stepfather, J.D., a violent gas-attendant-turned preacher who ran off with another woman years before. He has heard that John David is getting married but come back with more than wedding attendance in mind. Played with wily, slithering, Bible-thumping ferocity by Michael Holden, J.D. is manipulative in the extreme as he swaggers in arrogantly, in full expectation that a few sweet words will be all it takes to win Martha back. Does he really want her back though or is he just shoring up his “good deeds” for Judgment Day? His arrival throws the already-upset household into confusion and the volatile menace he brings is palpable. The threat of violence is real and his Bible-waving hypocrisy is as nauseatingly self-serving as it is dangerous to Martha because she is lonely, desperate to be loved and vulnerable to his lies and self-professed “saved” status in the eyes of the Lord. For Martha, it's an object she simply cannot comprehend with her blinkered worldview. She reads the articles and clippings Thomas sends her, though, and confesses she always secretly wanted to be a teacher. In an extraordinary scene near the end of the play, her world does go dark. Martha steps forward alone into a spot of light on the stage and, in clearly ringing, confident, and articulate tones, she describes the woman she could have been had she had an education. It’s a masterful, dramatic stroke of character development and thematic poignancy. In a sweet Ojai twist to this Southern tale, Camp commissioned renowned local composer Judy Vander to write original music for the celebrated last few words of Darwin’s “Origin of Species” Broadway singer and local actor Asunta Fleming performed on and recorded. In every way and at every turn “Bless your Heart” is truly excellent. It’s timely, important and, at once, both depressingly and optimistically real. It is genuinely one of the best, most meaty pieces of theater this reviewer has ever seen, all leavened with crackling Southern humor. In this play, contemporary, complicated domestic tensions in poor, “white-trash” America, serve as a backdrop in the theater of ideas, asking some of the biggest questions ever faced; long conversations are sure to be sparked among those who see it. |
‘Bless Your Heart’ inspired by life of inspiring playwright
by Rita Moran, Theater Critic Ojai Valley News Photo by Tom Moore 
Mix battling beliefs about evolution and religion, stir in a twitch of Elvis Presley, and playwright Richard Camp has created a gentle show that uses humor and gradual understanding to bind a rock-ribbed family back together. It may be just a short jog down the emotional road, but it’s a start.
Camp’s cast of characters was inspired by his own life, he writes in program notes, explaining that his stepfather was a Baptist preacher with a sixth-grade education and his parents grew up committed to the basics of the evangelical world. With what seems a simple turn in his younger years, albeit a life changing one, Camp was the first in his family to graduate from high school, following that with college. Education was an “escape” for him. Building on the basics of his early life, the playwright has brought together characters that echo some of the personalities that surrounded him as he grew up. Central to the tale is Thomas (David Nelson Taylor), who plays the son who returns to his North Carolina hometown for a family occasion and realizes, as he did years before, that he and the others seem to come from different worlds. His mother, Martha (Susan Kelejian), hasn’t budged from rock-firm beliefs implanted in her almost from birth. With them, she nurtures an innate stubbornness that has kept her on the straight-and-narrow despite a husband (Michael Holden as J.D.) who tried to rule the roost but ultimately faded away. They are gathered in the family home for the impending marriage of Martha’s younger son, John David (Chance Kelejian), and his girlfriend Charlene (KiSea Katikka). Both in their teens, they seem young for marriage, though probably not among the friends around them. Thomas is hoping to get the teens to reconsider whether marriage is wise at their age. Stirring the stew is Lucille (Julie Denney Hamann), Thomas’ aunt and a lively chatterbox who’s been married, count ’em, 11 times. As they all gather in the family home where the action takes place, a wide range of personality clashes naturally occur, with John David the one most likely to get into a fight about anything that annoys him, and a lot does, singling him out as the most unsettled one in the family. Martha is at the center of the play throughout, the rock that kept things together one way or the other over the years. Susan Kelejian manages to vividly portray the strong-willed mother in both amusing and moving moments. Taylor’s Thomas is portrayed as a quiet but intelligent man who helps the family move through the ups and downs of its roiling lives. They are central to the impact of the show. But the strong cast handles the various comic, and occasionally conflicting, moments with a sense of the underpinning reality of life in very small town America. Camp not only wrote the play but also is producer. Tom Eubanks is the director. Science and religion take the stage by Sheli Ellsworth Ventura Breeze The Ojai Art Center Theater is performing the original play Bless Your Heart through September 29 with Friday and Saturday night performances at 7:30 PM and Sunday matinees at 2 PM. The Ojai Art Center’s own artistic director, Emmy winner Richard Camp, wrote Bless Your Heart which explores the impact of religion, education and science in modern culture. Camp describes it as “a play about evolution and faith with a juicy dollop of Elvis Presley fandom . . .”
Set in 1998 North Carolina, a deeply religious family prepares for the wedding of 17 year old John David played by Chance Kelejian to the ditzy 18 year old preacher’s daughter played by KiSea Katikka. The festivities are dampened when John David’s stubborn mother, Martha—played by Susan Kelejian—refuses to be involved in the nuptials. After John David’s brother, Thomas—portrayed by David Nelson Taylor—arrives, the family’s dynamic goes into further free fall. The educated Thomas brings his liberal, science-based ideas into the already turbulent situation and when John David’s estranged preacher father—JD played by veteran actor Michael Holden—arrives, things go from bad to worse. Fortunately, Martha’s sister—brilliantly portrayed by true southern belle Julie Denny Hamann— keeps the laughs on track throughout the whole debacle. Camp took on a controversial topic and made it fun and watchable. The acting is spirited and engaging; for anyone interested in Darwinism, God, or the matrimony of the two. |
