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 ltown America.
Camp not only wrote the play but also is producer. Tom Eubanks is the director.