Moses Cleaveland led a band of surveyors and settlers to the eastern shore of the Cuyahoga some 212 years ago. Now he's returned to tell us that it's time to move on. At least that's the message delivered in his name by Michael Regnier, the buckskin clad reincarnation of our founder now appearing in Migration, Part I of the Cleveland plays, commissioned by Dobama Theatre.

There's something unsettling about hearing from the man himself that your time on the shores of Lake Erie is up. Who should know better than Cleaveland, who first discovered the possibilities of "the best location in the nation."

"We could use a new start," agrees Lenny Renkoff, played by George Roth, when he meets Moses on the RTA. Lenny is a downsized sales executive who rides the train all day, studying the graffiti on passing walls and wondering what happened to his art-school dreams. Emotionally bankrupt, betrayed by the institutions he thought would sustain him forever, Lenny is a little bit like Cleveland.

So is Nisha, a pregnant photographer who refuses to abandon her home in Slavic Village even when her husband gets a job offer in Columbus. Nisha believes she has found the place where she can do the most good for herself, her neighbors and her unborn child. So she lets her husband Luke go off on his own.

Is life really a cosmic migration whose pattern is too large to be seen and understood in a lifetime or even a succession of lifetimes? Is Moses an opportunist or a kind of prophetic angel come to awaken us with a sign?

Migration is the work of a trio of Cleveland playwrights — Eric Coble, Nina Domingue and Eric Schmiedl — and it suffers from a proliferation of ideas and styles that is never fully resolved. The opening monologue suggests that Migration could have been a very different kind of play, a kind of collage a la Studs Terkel that would have been both sentimental and predictable. Instead the playwrights have chosen to mine a much richer vein of material, but it needs more time and more definition than they have been able to give it.

Much of playwriting is rewriting. Migration has progressed from the raw- idea stage to the metaphor stage but still has a long way to go. In the meantime the piece is held together by a potent musical score, the work of sound designer Richard Ingraham and Coble, and by some very strong ensemble work under the direction of Schmiedl.

Leslie Ann Price as Lenny's wife Fran and Courtney Schloss in a variety of roles make a strong contribution, as does Robert Williams, who transforms Luke into a nice guy with a dilemma instead of a man who deserts his pregnant wife. Nina Domingue brings her own particular charm to the role of Nisha. Anthony Elfonzia Nickerson-El moves us with his delivery of the opening monologue. Michael Regnier strikes the perfect balance between the comic and the apocalyptic, and George Roth is a haunting Lenny.

It's not soup yet, but like the shores of Lake Erie when first sighted by our founder, it's teeming with possibilities.

The Cleveland Plays, Part I: Migration: Through June 1, Dobama Theatre at the Cleveland Play House, 8500 Euclid Ave., 216.932.3396.