Dobama Brings a Whole Lot of Soul to 'Something Clean'

Credit: Photo by Steve Wagner Photography

If you like your plays to start slowly as you gradually gather enough exposition to figure out who the characters are and what’s happening, you’ll be challenged by the beginning of the absorbing but somewhat flawed drama Something Clean, now at Dobama Theatre.

The playwright Selina Fillinger has opted for an in media res opening, using short scenes, some only a few seconds long, to convey the fractured nature of the worlds inhabited by three characters. On one hand, and in one section of the stage, we have Charlotte and Doug, a white middle-age suburban couple who are clearly going through emotional tumult of some kind. And then there’s Joey, a bubbly young Black supervisor at the Center for Assault Prevention and Intervention, a place that helps survivors deal with sexual assault.

These worlds come together when Charlotte visits the Center and offers to volunteer. But she declines to tell Joey her name (“Call me Charley”) and wants no contact with the clients. She just wants to help in the background—arranging files and cleaning toilets. As she says, “I’m great at cleaning stains.”

As the scenes switch back and forth between the modish, sterile environs of Charlotte and Doug’s home to the messy but open-hearted Center office, we learn through tiny fragments that the couple’s problems stem from a crime their 20-year-old son Kai committed. He evidently sexually assaulted a co-ed at the college he attends. Even though his crime was gigantically repugnant in an unspecified way, he was sentenced to just six months in prison. And he will be coming home soon.

The first half of this 95-minute play is composed of those short scenes, which the playwright cuts off just when they start to become interesting. It can feel a bit disorienting and upsetting to be jerked around like that. But you soon understand that this is a choice made by Fillinger, to put the audience in a mental state similar to that of Charlotte, where suddenly none of the puzzle pieces of her sedate life fit together anymore.

While that structural approach is successful, it keeps the characters at arm’s length, not providing enough information for us to understand how they are processing this monumental cleaving of their family. The same is true for Joey, since we learn that this 24-year-old man was abandoned by his mother after she learned he had been molested by a neighbor many years before.

Since we aren’t permitted to learn these facts through character-driven scenes and we never meet Kai or the survivor, we are spoon-fed key details at various points. We are also instructed about sexual assault itself, and the fact that Black perpetrators are often sentenced to much more jail time than white perps for the same crimes.

Some of the scenes begin to stretch credulity, as when Charlotte visits the site of her son’s assault, an area near a dumpster behind a frat house. She goes there to clean the site, to “clean the stain,” and this symbolic act suffers from its obviousness.

At different times, she also meets two people by the dumpster. One is a campus cop who, after a few seconds of small talk, immediately opens up and shares his marital situation with Charlotte. And the other is an aggressive drunk frat boy who runs off when Charlotte starts yelling at him. Neither encounter rings true.

That said, you might think this is not a play worth seeing, and that is absolutely untrue. While those script flaws exist, the playwright has a deft touch with many dark comedy lines. When Joey and Charlotte are wrapping up scented condoms—vanilla, strawberry, etc.—as gifts for a Center event, she turns up her nose (“Nobody wants to make love to a milkshake”).

Director Shannon Sindelar brings outstanding performances from her three-person cast. As Charlotte, the inestimable Derdriu Ring embodies the wrenching pain of a parent whose child has somehow become a reviled monster. Every move and gesture Ring makes is subtly crafted.

In the less complex role of Doug, Robert Ellis creates a nice guy who can’t figure out how to express his love for his wife while confronted with the agonizing issue of their son. Ellis is at all times believable. Together, he and Ring compose a symphony of tiny, missed connections.

And as Joey, Isaiah Betts pumps energy and joy into his role, and the play itself. Then he makes the turn when he relates his sad history with his mother. The humanity of the play rests on this character’s shoulders and Betts delivers.

The production is enhanced by an efficient scenic design by Naoko Skala and an effective sound design (snatches of tortured music, odd sound effects and vocalizations) from Angie Hayes.

Something Clean isn’t perfect, but it has enormous soul. And Dobama’s stellar performances help it soar above any of the script’s dings and dents.

Something Clean
Through March 30 at Dobama Theatre, 2340 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, 216-932-3396, dobama.org.

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