Something Clean concerns the aftermath of a sex crime, although its perpetrator and his victim never actually appear in the play, and the details of the assault are not disclosed.
Instead, playwright Selina Fillinger centers her drama upon Charlotte (Kathryn Erbe), whose college age son is currently serving a prison sentence for committing the crime. Apparently the assault was so nasty and newsworthy that Charlotte and Doug (Daniel Jenkins), her husband, are lying low in their city.
It becomes evident—from their body language initially—that this nice, white, professional couple is experiencing problems with intimacy as a result of their mutual troubles.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★ review here.]
Doug immerses himself at his job. Without mentioning it to Doug, Charlotte volunteers at a local center for sexual assault and intervention. Working there, Charlotte soon gets chummy with Joey (Christopher Livingston), a bright fellow who runs the center and who happens to be half her age and gay.
As their friendship deepens over the next few months, Joey learns relatively little about Charlotte, who does not divulge her real name and circumstances. But Charlotte learns much about Joey’s troubled relationship with his estranged mother and how his partnership with a man a dozen years his senior has gone stale. These revelations strike chords within her being.
Charlotte’s growing maternal affection for Joey mingles with guilty feelings that she may have been inattentive to her son and accordingly responsible for his actions. Unable to share therapy sessions with Doug, Charlotte feels compelled to go repeatedly at night to her son’s college campus, where she cleans up the trash around a dumpster.
Eventually there is a crisis during which these three lives finally intersect.
Something Clean is crisply crafted as an 80-minute series of brief scenes as Charlotte alternately exchanges confidences with Joey and ambivalently parries Doug’s clumsy attempts to patch up their marriage. Living up to its title, the play does not provide any dirty details about the assault or personal information regarding the two people it directly involves. However, it finds time to mention statistics regarding sexual assault and also brings up and drops a point regarding race and the justice system.
Although this earnest drama presents a worthwhile alternative to the typical he-said-she-said dynamics of sex crime scenarios, its story is a not entirely satisfying look at a peripheral individual damaged by the toxicity of such a misdeed. Both Charlotte’s inner character and the exploration of her conscience-stricken actions remain vague. Events leading to the story’s mildly contrived climax are not completely plausible.
Really, Doug has no clue his wife is working at a sexual assault center? Seriously, she’s compulsively scrubbing the filth off campus dumpsters?
Fortunately, the role of Charlotte is sensitively portrayed by Kathryn Erbe, that excellent actor best known for her years of TV service as Detective Alexandra Eames on Law and Order: Criminal Intent. An accomplished stage artist who effortlessly radiates sincerity, Erbe lends her wounded Charlotte a wistful, melancholy quality that helps to complete the blanks left open by the playwright.
Neatly supported by Daniel Jenkins and Christopher Livingston as the men in Charlotte’s life, Erbe’s genuine presence is integral to director Margot Bordelon’s solid production of Something Clean within the intimate Black Box Theatre at the Steinberg Center, where Roundabout Theatre Company’s world premiere opened on Wednesday.
Bordelon paces the play nimbly on a modest, effective setting designed by Reid Thompson that situates telling components of Charlotte’s home on one side of the stage and the assault center on the other, and links them by a round table at center. A metallic effect that glints within the subtly-layered sound design created by Palmer Hefferan gives an unsettling accent to certain moments.
The playwright’s smart command of everyday conversation and her decision to withhold messy story details makes for a sleek drama that allows viewers very little time to question the credibility of who and what they are witnessing. Such characteristics foster a cool, even chilly, atmosphere that seems rather at odds with a hot topic like sexual intimacy in its consensual and criminal manifestations.
