Moniece Clark

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman

Barker Room Rep at The Broadwater

Thru October 2

LaShea Delaney’s drama, Moniece Clark is about the media’s exploitation of crimes against women and the tendency of law enforcement to downplay those crimes if the victim is a woman of color. You don’t have to look far to uncover the deplorable statistics behind those concerns, to be found in the Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System or UN Women (an agency affiliated with the United Nations) which will inform you that such crimes are “under-reported, under-investigated, and under-prosecuted.”

The title character is a young African-American woman who’s been missing for several years. Her sister Mimi (Ekeme Ekanem) has been in contact with a group of internet sleuths; their aim, ostensibly, has been to help find the disappeared woman, whose fate is no longer on the radar of an indifferent police force.

These internet sleuths call themselves “The Moniece Clark Seekers.”  They are unlike web detectives like Michelle McNamara, whose posthumously published book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (the basis for a subsequent HBO series) relayed her contribution to the arrest and conviction of the Golden State Killer, former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo.

Instead, these “seekers” act in predatory and peculiar ways — their offers to assist are far more harassing than helpful. Their constant overtures infuriate Mimi’s mother (Ashley Denise Robinson), who feels hounded and becomes irate at the continual clamor for personal details about her missing daughter. Mary, we’re told, almost lost her job over their persistent inquiries, though the details surrounding that crisis are never enumerated.

But Mimi is different. She complains about having to humor the group’s requests for information; on the other hand, she has no compunction about accepting their gifts, which range from small trifles like stuffed animals to cash and a new laptop. When Mary discovers the latter concealed among Mimi’s possessions, the younger woman dissembles and pretends it’s been borrowed from a friend before admitting that it was sent to her by a member of the group.

The investigation takes a high-profile turn when a former female police detective, Deborah Logan (Rebecca Rodriguez), joins in the hunt. Pushed out of her job with the police, she’s lately been featured on a true-crime TV program — but has now decided to leave the show in order to devote her talents to uncovering what happened to Moniece. Rather than welcoming Deborah’s assistance, Mimi behaves rudely, implying that Deborah’s motives are a corrupt way to draw attention to herself rather than a sincere attempt to locate Mimi’s sibling.

Sometime later, a man named Dave (Danny Bret Krueger) appears on Mary’s doorstep and introduces himself as an insurance company rep (raising the question: would a mother who manages a diner for a living take out a policy on her teenage daughter who works as a waitress?). In any case, it’s soon apparent that Dave, who asks a lot of questions, is not an insurance guy but one of the “seekers” in person. He claims to be helping Mimi, who is suspicious of where and how he accumulated personal items relating to her family, her missing sister and herself.

Viewed as a slice-of-life drama (or even a mystery with a twist), Delaney’s storytelling is problematic. For example, I searched the web for a real-life account in which people acting as internet sleuths harassed a victim’s family to distraction, or where a family member of a victim bilked those trying to help for cash and gifts. I couldn’t seem to find any. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, or that a playwright is precluded from creating this kind of scenario. But here, in this play (presented as a quasi-docudrama, not a fantasy or satire!), the setup seems contrived, a way to create conflict from the outside rather than organically from the characters’ themselves.  Likewise, it’s unclear why Mimi acts (at first) the way she does with Deborah, a professional who wants to help. It as if the playwright has set up this dramatic conflict for its own sake, but without a plausible reason.

The script includes a voiceover (Jon Michael Villagomez) that conjures the narrator of a true crime series — recounting Moniece’s story, as if for a TV documentary. His tone is salacious and insinuating —similar to Dave’s when he pries for information. It made me wonder if in her plot Delaney had not conflated the attitudes and actions of her fictional group of raptorial web detectives with that true-crime branch of the media that sensationalizes these crimes for popular entertainment, instead of building her story around the latter’s hunt for titillating programming.

As Mimi, Ekanem has a lively attractive presence, but the whys-and-wherefores of her character’s behavior remain murky throughout — the problems in the script underscored, under Mark Sitko’s direction. We never get a sense that she and Mary are mother and daughter; their scenes are stiff and awkward. There’s never a scene where you see them mourn Moniece in depth. Rodriguez looks the part of a maverick detective but falls short of being persuasive — but again, the character is not fully developed, more an extension of the plot. On the other hand, Kreuger — in his role as a very creepy guy — is a standout, emanating the kind of weirdness that would prompt me to run a mile.

The production’s notable strength is designer Yasmine El-Tayeb’s sound design, which generates an understated but effective tension throughout.  Ezra Fisher’s lighting also adds much to the ambiance; it goes well with Carlo Maghirang’s scenic design, which is both stark and aesthetically appealing, though it reflected little of the mental chaos of a family in crisis.

Barker Room Rep, The Broadwater Mainstage, 1078 Lillian Way, Hollywood; Thurs.-Sun., 8 pm; thru Oct. 2. https://moniececlark.bpt.me