The archaeologists in “The Mound Builders” spend a lot of time talking about their work. You can’t blame them: The Illinois field hosting their important dig is about to be submerged by a man-made lake. This is the team’s last opportunity to root for artifacts from ancient Native American tribes.
Lanford Wilson’s 1975 play is framed as a flashback told by the expedition’s leader, professor August Howe (David Conrad), as he records his notes for his secretary to transcribe. He also occasionally projects slides. They look good but like so much in that meandering show, they aren’t strictly necessary.
And, unlike the other Wilson revival now on the boards — the warm “Talley’s Folly” — this production, directed by Jo Bonney, is also overly dour.
During the fateful summer he reminisces about, August, his wife, Cynthia (Janie Brookshire) and their teenage daughter, Kirsten (Rachel Resheff), camped out in a farmhouse. As designed by Neil Patel, the place looks like a depressing modernist-rustic lodge.
Staying with them are fellow digger Dan Loggins (Zachary Booth), an enthusiastic pothead, and his ob-gyn wife, Jean (Lisa Joyce, looking way too young for the role).
But the worst of the bunch is August’s moody sister, Delia (Danielle Skraastad), who’s dropped by to recover from her substance-abusing exploits in exotic countries. This smug, passive-aggressive drama queen spends her day on the couch, where she dispenses a sarcastic running commentary that counterbalances her brother’s more solemn narration.
Wilson sets up real stakes, like the antagonism between the scientists and the field owner’s son, Chad (Will Rogers), who dreams of riches once the property is developed.
“You may know a hell of a lot about your grave robbing,” he tells Dan, “but you’re really full of s – – t when it comes to commerce.”
Yet this tension is underexploited — and feebly acted by the overly mannered Rogers — leaving room for endless semi-philosophical conversations. Some of them can be poetic, as when Dan extrapolates an ode about an extinct civilization from a simple bone awl. But the total is less than the sum of the parts.
After plodding along for much of the evening, the plot suddenly jerks awake in the last 15 minutes, and tears off into a frantic finale — it’s as if we’re at a different play altogether.
But by then the show, like the archaeologists, has dug itself into such a deep hole, it can’t get out.