The Wash Book

By the author of Yankee Dawg You Die, The Wash examines the slow and painful death of a marriage after 42 years. Masi Matsumoto has been separated from her husband, Nobu, for more than a year, but she still returns weekly to pick up and deliver his laundry, while Nobu refuses to believe their marriage is over. One daughter hopes for reconciliation; the other estranged from her father since her marriage to a black man, encourages her mother's move towards freedom. Nobu is engaged in a growing friendship with restaurant owner Kiyoko, but when he discovers that Masi has tentatively begun a relationship with another man, Sadao, Nobu's pride is battered, and he becomes reclusive and obstinate. Finally, Masi asks Nobu for a divorce, and at the end of the play, Nobu is alone trying to figure out what his life has become, and how to restore relationships with his daughters.