In a 90-minute show, the most complex character usually must read like a billboard at thruway speed. In her 2024 play Salvage, Lena Kaminsky lowers the stakes to raise the subtlety. A fast, small-cast play is a tough format for nuance, but Kaminsky ignores some rules to create a surprisingly affecting story. She embraces the time limit and the accent on comedy but tosses out the expected all-problems-solved ending and keeps the exposition slippery.
Viewers often have to infer what’s driving the characters, but in Dorset Theatre Festival‘s production, outstanding performances make them real. The play premiered last year, but Dorset nurtured a full collaboration, with the playwright present at rehearsals to revise the script.
The script is delightfully low-key, running on the small jokes of daily life, not the grand confessions of drama.
The setting is a town dump, an overflowing metaphor for change, loss and reclamation, with all the comedic ramifications of letting go. The dump is also a very good place to meet people without the weight of expectations. The characters all have something to salvage, but they start with no impulse to tackle what’s wrong in their lives.
People get to know each other, sometimes by means of the number of Captain Morgan bottles going into the recycling bin. The script is delightfully low-key, running on the small jokes of daily life, not the grand confessions of drama. Carla has returned to her hometown after losing a job; Kenny works at the dump and went to the same high school as Carla but is 10 years younger; Elaine, the transfer station manager, was the volunteer who brought pizza to the school plays directed by Holly, known to Carla as the formidable “Ms. P.”
The story arcs glide on good comedy and, when you least expect it, burst open into tension. Each character has a reason for self-doubt. Can Carla wiggle past her own impressive sarcasm to forgive herself for not saving a best friend who was in more need than she knew? Did Kenny fail both his marriage and the retired teacher who was a father to him? Will Elaine overcome the shame of pressuring Ms. P to hide their relationship now that her lover is dead and her grief is hard to share?
This new play is a solid show, though further improvement is possible. The opening scene, for example, puts Carla alone in a spotlight to muse on reality by talking to a mirror. She can’t quite land on either satire or madness, and when she hauls the mirror to the dump, we’re a little too relieved that the symbol can stop screaming, Accept yourself.
Yet humor makes even that scene work. Each character’s sadness rises to the surface with a sting of clarity through a lot of comedic bubbles. Director M. Bevin O’Gara uses the reality of the ramshackle dump to ground the characters, and she exploits plain old grubbiness when Carla and Kenny race each other to pitch cans and bottles into sorting bins. O’Gara works big but also small, focusing on simple gestures and allowing time for connections to form.
The comedy percolates, especially through Carla. The role is played by Eva Kaminsky, the playwright’s sister, who magically clarifies Carla by what she lacks — confidence, sociability and the bloodthirsty daring to land more clients for an inherited aromatherapy business. Instead, Carla is sloppy, funny and more needy than she’ll admit. In a hilarious scene where Carla watches a video in her kitchen about aromatherapy marketing angles, Kaminsky plays loneliness as pure unselfconsciousness. Her hair is tousled as only hair in private can be; she contradicts the slick sales voice, asserting herself as only someone who’s not being watched can.
Robbie Sublett, as Kenny, marks out the character’s sharp edges. Kenny is easily infuriated by his ex-wife, mostly because he’s been assigned the permanent role of asshole in their story. He drinks too much, which he rationalizes as drinking just as he did in his twenties, even if it’s high time to stop in his forties. Sublett moves like a hothead, then jerks himself back to hide a little tenderness, a little fear, always walking the line from volatile to vulnerable.
Elaine, played with quiet depth by Marcia DeBonis, is beatifically at home at the dump, and perhaps nowhere else. Elaine unfolds slowly, moving from background to foreground. She shambles around the premises, alone and overlooked until she gives Carla something to think about — and something to do for her. DeBonis excels in the play’s moment of true catharsis.
Scenic designers Christopher and Justin Swader create the grit and detail of a dump, from a timber-frame shed down to the mess of leaves texturing the ground. The lighting, by Daisy Long, is never so busy that it eclipses the actors but brings depth to each milestone in the play.
Between scenes, sound designer M.L. Dogg supplies a driving, funky jangle that suits a dump trip. Costume designer Chelsea Kerl develops each character’s style. Carla starts swaddled in sweaters and flannel, then quietly peels back her layers.
If your test of a play is a confrontation scene in which antagonists duel in well-written lines to resolve a conflict, Salvage will let you down. The characters are lively, funny and unpredictable, and the staging at Dorset is superb, but the play doesn’t follow a formula where good old trouble leads to good old healing.
It operates where everyday life is lived. The three characters carry the ache of self-doubt, and the play is constructed so those doubts bite. In the play’s horse race between comedy and drama, humor ends up lengths ahead of sadness, but every time the characters pause to question themselves, we’re paying our closest attention. Viewers who require a playwright to fix problems will be disappointed; viewers who like to contemplate people will have a little moment of wonder.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Trash Talks | Theater review: Salvage, Dorset Theatre Festival”
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2025.
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