Throughout actor Danny DeVito’s career, he has shown an affinity for making characters endearing in spite of themselves. He’s had ample help from writers, mind you, from those on the classic TV series “Taxi” — his vehicle to fame, in the role of the congenitally dishonest, perennially cranky dispatcher, Louie De Palma — to David Mamet and Elmore Leonard, who respectively wrote and co-wrote screenplays for the films “Hoffa” and “Get Shorty” (the latter based on Leonard’s novel).

In a new stage outing, only Mr. DeVito’s second on Broadway — following a 2017 revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” — the veteran actor is once again cast as a guy who’s a little hard to love, at least on the surface. Mind you, surfaces can be hard to find, literally, in Theresa Rebeck’s new play, “I Need That,” which follows a 70-year-old widower who essentially stopped throwing things out when his wife died: three years ago.

As a result, Mr. DeVito’s character, Sam, now lives in complete disarray amid piles of papers, magazines, and other artifacts that are vividly represented in Alexander Dodge’s sprawling set design. He insists to his grown daughter, Amelia, and his old friend, Foster — the play’s other characters, and apparently the only people who dare venture into this wasteland — that he keeps the place clean, and denies he is a hoarder.

Amelia, who is charmingly played by the star’s own daughter, Lucy DeVito, is having none of it. A neighbor has already complained, and when Sam compares the prospect of deciding what to get rid of to the dilemma faced by a mother who can save only one child in a famous movie, Amelia promptly sets him straight. 

“This is not like ‘Sophie’s Choice,’” she snaps. “This is like: The fire department is coming and they’re going to condemn the place and tell the health department to throw you out if you don’t do something.” It’s among the more clever lines in Ms. Rebeck’s latest work, which is something of a disappointment coming after the playwright’s lovely, moving “Dig,” which had its premiere off-Broadway in September.

“Dig” also featured a male character of a certain age who had pretty much shut himself off from others. In that play, the reasons were not clearly detailed, but the role and the themes were so beautifully developed that his elusiveness only added poignance. We learn more about Sam’s background — his devotion to his late wife, his estrangement from his siblings — but the dialogue seems canned, like the kind you’d expect in a sitcom, and not one of the caliber of “Taxi.”

Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel, who helmed Ms. Rebeck’s “Bermhardt/Hamlet” several years back, nonetheless culls winning performances from all three cast members.  Ms. DeVito makes Amelia, who ends up having her own issues, immensely likable, while Ray Anthony Thomas brings an easy wit and empathy to Foster, whose own story is eventually fleshed out a bit as well.

As for Mr. DeVito, he’s actually most affecting in Sam’s more desolate and vulnerable moments; at such points, I was reminded of the actor’s breakthrough film performance, pre-“Taxi,” as a sweetly guileless mental inpatient in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” — a role he had first played in an off-Broadway production. 

Although the writing here doesn’t serve the star as well, and certainly doesn’t measure up to Ms. Rebeck’s best work, that may be all some of Mr. DeVito’s fans need, or at least enough to satisfy them.