The always clever Theresa Rebeck’s play Dig awkwardly traverses psychological terrain without much plausibility. Set in a small-town plant shop, Dig follows its owner, Roger, a loner who's always run the place by himself but who hires a local pothead, Everett, to make deliveries. One day Roger’s longtime friend, Lou, who acts as his accountant of sorts, brings his wayward daughter Megan into the shop—she has just served time for a horrific crime and is also a recovering alcoholic. Roger and Megan make a reluctant connection, and she begins working at Dig, mostly of her own accord because Roger is unable to say she can’t.

 

From this contrived setup, Rebeck’s characters move around the beautifully appointed, if overstuffed, set by Christopher and Justin Swader like chess pieces manipulated by their author—there’s rarely any logic to their actions or their conversations. Roger and Megan’s budding relationship (unconsummated, according to her) never makes any psychological, dramatic or even comic sense, while a later attempted date rape by Everett after he and Megan go out drinking is quickly forgotten. When Megan’s ex-husband Adam, the actual perpetrator of the crime she took the fall for, confronts her before he marries someone else, nothing they say has any sting or depth. Rebeck piles up the obstacles for these people, particularly the shattered Megan, but they feel like mere contrivances for two hours.

 

Rebeck writes engaging dialogue but, in Dig at least (some of her earlier plays, like Seared and Seminar, were funny and perceptive), there’s little that’s insightful or piercing, especially since Rebeck directs without much distinction. When there’s a complaint about the shop’s name (which apparently might be confusing to perspective customers), it’s a bemusing moment, since anyone can look through the shop window, see the dozens of plants on display and figure it out.

 

Dig uses horticulture as an obvious metaphor for fixing psyches that, like the plants that Roger nurses back to health, may have been damaged beyond repair. But Rebeck never moves beyond the metaphorical to elucidate these individuals deserving of closer examination; it’s up to the game cast to, occasionally, make Dig both amusing and less trite than the material offers. 

 

Greg Keller is always entertaining even if Everett is a mere plot device. Triney Sandoval as Lou and Mary Bacon as Molly, a repeat customer who becomes important in Megan’s life, and David Mason as Adam do what they can with considerably little. Jeffrey Bean, an assertive presence, nearly makes Roger into a comprehendible character. 

 

That goes double for Andrea Syglowski who, in a nearly impossible role, invests so much of herself histrionically to clarify the contradictory Megan that she makes us sympathize with and even, almost, shed a tear for her. What Syglowski can’t do is dig Dig out of the hole the writer-director herself has buried it in.