Jeffrey Bean (left) as plant-store owner Roger, with Greg Keller as Everett, a troublesome employee, in Theresa Rebeck’s Dig. Photograph by James Leynse. (Banner photograph by Justin Swader.)
The plant-store setting of Theresa Rebeck’s play Dig might be reminiscent of Little Shop of Horrors, but in Dig the plants are the victims, not the aggressors—victims of human selfishness, anger, and desire. For Roger (Jeffrey Bean), the tightly wound owner of the store (which is named Dig), the damage done to plants is more keenly felt than the damage human beings do to others or to themselves; and it is also more easily addressed, as Roger is a master of restoring vitality and life to seemingly doomed plants. With people, he’d really rather not be bothered.
In the play’s opening exchange, Roger is appalled at the neglect that his best (and only) friend Lou (Triney Sandoval), the store’s sometimes accountant, has shown toward a plant:
Lou: I apologize.
Roger: You apologize?
Lou: What do you want?
Roger: I don’t want, I don’t—never mind. It’s fine. I will save this plant.
Lou: You can save it?
Roger: Just don’t talk to me for a minute, okay?
Megan (Andrea Syglowski, right) has repotted a plant in an attempt to show Roger she is worthy of volunteering at the store. Photograph by Justin Swader.
Roger then takes the plant and turns it, as Lou watches and Roger ignores him. It’s clear that this is the cadence of Roger’s life: a person lets you down, and a plant suffers; he must save the plant and ignore the person.
Lou’s daughter, Megan (Andrea Syglowski), has been sitting in the corner of the store during their discussion and soon interrupts not only the conversation but also the carefully coordinated alienation of Roger’s life: “I so fucked up, I tried to kill myself? And I had nowhere to go and they couldn’t let me out of the hospital unless someone said, ‘Okay she can come here’?” Megan’s “mandate,” courtesy of AA, is that “I have to tell people things.”
The first part of Megan’s backstory is illuminated early on, after she loses her temper with a customer at the store, the talkative and devoutly Catholic Molly (Mary Bacon), who seems to recognize her. The truth then emerges: Megan was responsible for the death of her own infant son, who was left in a car on a hot day without ventilation. The case, and subsequent trial, was a media sensation in Ohio, where the play takes place. One of the play’s questions is how Megan can go on living, can even find redemption, after such an incident (this thread is interrupted, or reconfigured, by a twist in the story in the second act). And one way she tries is by forcing herself on Roger as a voluntary employee, substituting care for plants for the care she neglected to give to her son.
Another component in this volatile mix is Everett (Greg Keller), a seemingly harmless man-child stoner who drives Roger’s truck, making deliveries and helping customers at home. Roger has been trying to fire Everett, who is able to talk his way out of the dismissal with absurdist logic (Keller is excellent with these comic moments), but Roger finally does so after Everett calls Megan a child killer who is damaging the store’s business.
Megan argues with her father, Lou (Triney Sandoval), who is also Roger’s friend and the store’s accountant. Photograph by James Leynse.
Rebeck is also the play’s director, and when the tone and story go a bit off the rails in the second act, lurching into melodrama, one wonders if a director with more distance from the text could have helped with tonal consistency or rather sharp divergences in character. In the play’s second half, characters such as Lou and Everett suddenly seem like completely different people; Roger and Megan’s relationship, which is meant to be the heart of the play, doesn’t feel earned in its sudden closeness and is marred by Megan’s abrupt attempts to seduce Roger, then emotionally destroy him, and then proclaim him a saint; a storyline about the store’s and the town’s financial plight is hinted at but not developed; and a cartoonish scene where Megan’s ex-husband shows up throws off the play’s trajectory and its psychological believability.
The scenic design of this Primary Stages production is by Christopher Swader and Justin Swader, and it’s fantastic in its abundance and detail. It enhances the play’s horticultural metaphors, which work very well during Dig’s best moments, when Rebeck’s fast-paced, quippy writing has the characters talking around conflict or traumatic subjects, indirectly or evasively, with a darkly comic tone.
Theresa Rebeck’s Dig runs through Oct. 22 at 59e59’s Theater A (59 East 59th St.). Evening performances are Tuesday–Saturday at 7 p.m.; matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are available by visiting 59e59.org.
Playwright & Director: Theresa Rebeck
Sets: Christopher Swader & Justin Swader
Costumes: Fabian Fidel Aguilar
Lighting: Mary Ellen Stebbins
Sound and Original Music: Fitz Patton
