• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Reviews from Broadway and Beyond

  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
September 20, 2023 7:55 pm

Dig: Theresa Rebeck’s Flavorful Plant-Based Comedy, at 59e59

By Steven Suskin

★★★★☆ Jeffrey Bean, Andrea Syglowski, and a fine cast nurture this well-potted tale of transplanted roots

Triney Sandoval and Andrea Syglowski "Dig." Photo: James Leynse
Triney Sandoval and Andrea Syglowski in “Dig.” Photo: James Leynse

In this time of plays and performance art of socially contemporary significance—and playwrights hoping for production nowadays avoid them at their peril—it’s kind of refreshing to enter a playhouse and find a good, old-fashioned, functionally sturdy set with doors and floors and windows, and upon it find a good, old-fashioned, functionally sturdy play with characters, plot, and a story interesting enough to keep you engaged. A play old-fashioned in construction, that is, albeit contemporary enough to include characters struggling with addiction, scandal, religion, and each other.

The item in question is Theresa Rebeck’s Dig, a Primary Stages presentation at 59e59. Rebeck, author of well more than a dozen produced plays (including Omnium Gatherum and Mauritius) and an accomplished television writer, knows her way around dramatic construction. That said, her recent efforts—like Seminar and Bernhardt/Hamlet—have been rather too well-crafted (or should we say manufactured?) to engage this particular viewer. So it is a pleasure to find, as Dig unfolds, that Rebeck here weaves a tale of interesting, flawed characters struggling to find their way through their own personal struggles toward each other. With laughter, drama, some wrenching plot developments, and more laughter. Much more laughter.

[Read Sandy MacDonald’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]

Dig is not about archeological excavations, nor is it situated in one of those environmentally friendly takeout salad shops. Roger (Jeffrey Bean) is proprietor of a good, old-fashioned—and thus struggling—neighborhood plant store named Dig. (One character suggests that he rename it “bloom,” while another suggest that business would pick up if he calls it “pot” and grows some in the back.)

Rebeck contrasts the crotchety, 50-ish proprietor with his friend and accountant, Lou (Triney Sandoval), and his employee, Emmett (Greg Keller), who drives the delivery truck and is less familiar with potted plants than he is with weed. After some healthy badinage, the wheels start rolling with the emergence of Megan (Andrea Syglowski), Lou’s grown daughter, who is all but overwhelmed by backstory. Matters, though, are not precisely as they seem.

Complicated entanglements occur quicker’n you can say “Anna Christie,” although with laughter mixed in among wrenching moments. Rebeck also throws in a few surprises, keeping viewers from sitting back complacently.

The playwright also provides roles her cast can sink their teeth, and talent, into. Bean offers just the right combination of laid-back mellowness and middle-age crotchets, recognizably so. Syglowski does a fine job as the not-quite heroine, skillfully navigating a potentially difficult set of dramatic demands. (If you wonder where you’ve seen her, she was central in both Pass Over and Halfway Bitches Go to Heaven.) Sandoval, of Marvin’s Room and Rebeck’s Bernhardt/Hamlet, is always welcome on stage. Everett avoids the cliches Rebeck has somewhat necessarily written into his role, while Mary Bacon (as a caring shopper who wanders in) provides a touch of normalcy and compassion.

Something about Dig reminded me of those well-turned plays of a half century ago, when folks like Paddy Chayefsky, Robert Anderson, and William Gibson prodded mid-century audiences forward. Specifically, Herb Gardner’s A Thousand Clowns, in which a set-in-his-ways curmudgeon is jolted out of complacency by a younger—in age and viewpoint—intruder whom he keeps trying to get rid of but can’t. Think of someone like Jason Robards vs. someone like Barbara Harris or Sandy Dennis.

But Rebeck writes her play in a manner that Gardner or the others, or even Jean Kerr, could not have, and directs it as well. Which might be part of the reason why Dig makes a more-than-satisfying meal. Like Little Shop of Horrors without the horrors, the camp, or carnivorous flytraps. Rebeck and her actors show us how it’s done, and enjoyably so.

Dig opened September 20, 2023, at 59E59 and runs through November 5. Tickets and information: 59e59.org

About Steven Suskin

Steven Suskin has been reviewing theater and music since 1999 for Variety, Playbill, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. He has written 17 books, including Offstage Observations, Second Act Trouble and The Sound of Broadway Music. Email: steven@nystagereview.com.

Primary Sidebar

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes: Let’s Hear It From the Boy

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★★☆ Hugh Jackman plays a professor entangled with a student in Hannah Moscovitch’s 90-minute drama

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes: Star Power Up Close

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty co-star in this intimate drama about a university professor who has an affair with one of his students.

The Black Wolfe Tone: Kwaku Fortune’s Forceful Semi-Autographical Solo Click

By David Finkle

★★★★☆ The actor, new to the Manhattan Stage, makes himself known, as does director Nicola Murphy Dubey

Five Models in Ruins, 1981: Dressed for Excess

By Michael Sommers

★★☆☆☆ Elizabeth Marvel shoots a gallery of swans in lovely circumstances

CRITICS' PICKS

Just in Time Christine Jonathan Julia

Just in Time: Hello, Bobby! Darin Gets a Splashy Broadway Tribute

★★★★☆ Jonathan Groff gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the Grammy-winning “Beyond the Sea” singer

John Proctor Is the Villain cast

John Proctor Is the Villain: A Fearless Gen Z Look at ‘The Crucible’

★★★★★ Director Danya Taymor and a dynamite cast bring Kimberly Belflower’s marvelous new play to Broadway

Good Night, and Good Luck: George Clooney Makes Startling Broadway Bow

★★★★★ Clooney and Grant Heslov adapt their 2005 film to reflect not only the Joe McCarthy era but today

The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Masterpiece from Page to Stage

★★★★★ Succession’s Sarah Snook is brilliant as everyone in a wild adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s prophetic novel

Operation Mincemeat: A Comical Slice of World War II Lore

★★★★☆ A screwball musical from London rolls onto Broadway

The Broadway company of Buena Vista Social Club. Photo by Matthew Murray

Buena Vista Social Club: ¡Qué Gran Fiesta!

★★★★★ A classic documentary on Afro-Cuban musical greats is transformed into a sparkling Broadway delight

Sign up for new reviews

Copyright © 2025 • New York Stage Review • All Rights Reserved.

Website Built by Digital Culture NYC.