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
