Jesus Hates Me

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Isn’t anything sacred?

Kathleen McCall as Annie in the Denver Center Theatre Company World Premiere of Jesus Hates Me. Photo by Terry Shapiro

Evidently not.

Which, after all, is a very good thing.

I never thought I would see the day when a playwright would have the audacity to write about the iconoclastic materialistic legalistic Christians who would sit in front of a statue, blow life into it, then beat themselves up, excuse their inabilities because the statue refuses to accomplish what they themselves don’t have the ingenuity to do.

They create such a hysterical very honest, very funny situation where laughter bubbles constantly allowing the brain to go into overdrive and think. Thinking and laughing doesn’t happen very often.

Playwright Wayne Lemon takes the inside of his growing up world of conservative Christianity exposing it in literary form through a brilliant moment of every day life. Vividly painting the portrait of a generational attitude of waiting for Daddy, or Jesus to do for them what they can’t figure out to do for themselves. Since Daddy or Jesus won’t do it, they can blame. Lizzie can’t leave because Daddy put her name in lights above the bar. Trane struts his stuff with purpose as a small town cop allowing him to wear a uniform and a badge all the while smirking over smoking the pot he confiscated in a raid.

Marlon Morrison takes Trane for a round about roller coaster ride as Trane strapped to his small town cop image, defending his place in the universe.

Justin Adams glued to his whiskey bottle, tied to his Mother, has brain energy to ask questions as Ethan, but doesn’t have gumption to do anything about the answers.

Kathleen McCall as Annie loves her Jesus at the Blood of the Lamb miniature golf course. Annie builds shrines to Jesus at every hole. Outside of her small trailer, she has a life sized Wal-Mart Jesus mannequin hanging on a cross. Although a relatively strange idea to us, there are several such iconoclastic theme parks, shrines, statues smattered around the country. Annie loves Jesus, pours her empty heart out for him, fears Ethan will leave her, while her existence grows stale, dried and empty.

Chelsey Rives as Lizzy hates the small town, thinks she loves Ethan, angry over his talking about going to work for his Uncle Bobby in Colorado, angry at her Father, but can’t push herself to do anything because her Father provided the bar for her with her name in lights. Michael Keyloun plays Georgie with simplicity. No one takes him seriously. In an attempt to blow off his head with a shotgun, he manages to destroy his vocal chords speaking only with the aid of an electronic device. His sister Lizzy showers disgust on him. The others treat him as though he shot his brains out instead of his voice box. He knows what they think of him, and he’s determined to have the last laugh.

Craig Pattison takes Boone for a high wide and handsome ride into the world of being one hole short of a golf course. Slow on the uptake, always a half a joke behind everyone else, Pattison allows lifeblood to flow into Boone, except to his brain.

Ethan plans to leave the small hick West Texas town in his tracks. Lizzy knows he will never leave. Boone is never certain what is going on, always wanting to know how he fits into all of the scenarios. Many of the funniest lines come out of his mouth.

Ethan moves the play along with his out stretched questions, angry over the Jesus mannequin because of all Annie has done, seeing that Jesus has done nothing for his mother. His life crashed in high school when he severely injured his knee in football. Football games in West Texas are everything to the small economically depressed towns. If you’re a football hero, you’re a big shot, you’re someone important, and you have a life. Strip that away and life is over, motivation gone, excuses end up at your doorstep by the barrel.

All of them have built a gigantic trap around themselves, all waiting for Jesus to appear and wipe away their nothingness. It doesn’t happen.

Lizzie has the bar. She doesn’t have to go anywhere. Boone hasn’t caught up with any idea yet. Georgie lives in his own world unseen by anyone else, even though he has plans someway somehow.

On a planned trashed set designed by Robert Mark Morgan, the dressing so well constructed, the set cries out the tone of the play from the beginning. There’s Lizzy’s bar with her name in red gaudy neon lights, the Jesus mannequin hanging on the cross, pieces of mannequins tossed around the tin trailer, and the Blood of the Lamp golf course entrance beckoning.

Lemon has done an amazing piece of work supplying laughable lines toppling over each other, at the same time providing depth and quality and food for thought buried within the story line. Few comedies actually provide thinkable stuff to mull around at the same time throwing out hysterical lines. Jesus Hates Me bid one to think through the questions along with Ethan.

They have the questions. They rub shoulders with the answers, but the answers demand action. Although they re angry the answers don’t come. They just haven’t gotten it yet that the answers demand action, their action. No one else’s.

Director David McClendon delves deep into the script, demanding the actors dive to discover the bright poignant colors covering their characters. They have done just that. The result is an exquisite comedy, featuring dark black lines of intriguing thought, with some of the funniest lines ever to appear on stage, out of the mouths of pathetic characters asking penetrating questions, at the same time don’t know which way is up.

Annie talks to Wal-Mart mannequins because they don’t judge.

Boone got fired the first day on the job because he blew up a dog.

Trapped in her small bar, Lizzie pleads, “Look at me. This isn’t who I really am.”

Trane looking for a child molester shoots himself in the foot, because he wants to be a hero. He likes being a cop. He likes helping people even though he is as trapped in a self-imposed cage as everyone else.

Professing love, Annie manipulates Ethan. It’s not love but clinging ownership out of her desperate fear of being alone. Afraid to be alone, Annie doesn’t know love, just needy.

Ethan asks Georgie if he ever thought about shooting himself again. Georgie asks, “Do you think I should?”

Ethan decides to stay until he is sure Annie will be OK. He will never leave. Excuses weigh heavily on his decision-making process.

Complicated tragic situation with five characters caught in a self induced trap, waiting for someone to do something to get them out of their miserable existence, missing the whole point that they have the ability to do for themselves, but which never crosses their mind. Jesus Hates Me is so brilliantly constructed that we laugh. We laugh at their slowness, their stupidity, lack of motivation.

The divinely delicious characters wear their warped drained hearts on their sleeve for the inconsistencies, depletion, depravation, distortion bleeding slowly for all to see, to laugh, at and with, their lack of ambition, thought process gone awry.

Lemon gives us an amazing slice of life living under our noses. McClendon captures the vision in bold primary colors muted with browns and grays with a cast who knows how to separate the colors, blending them with striking individuality. Jesus Hates Me is a powerful piece wavering on a sacred subject: life, disguising the serious side with grand humorous laughables.