GOOD PEOPLE,
GREAT SHOW

David Lindsay-Abaire’s poignant drama delivers a
powerful reminder that luck, circumstance, and class
often shape lives as much as talent or determination

In an alley behind a Dollar General store in South Boston, a middle-aged woman is embroiled in an argument with her manager. Margie has been late to work for the umpteenth time. Her manager Stevie who is almost young enough to be her son, has been informed that he has to fire her. Margie, who has known Stevie since he was a little boy, tries every trick in the book to change his mind: she explains her case — she has a disabled adult daughter who needs constant supervision and the babysitter was late — but it’s not accepted as an excuse. She appeals to his sense of decency. She appeals to his sense of community. She offers to take a massive pay cut. She offers to work part-time. She attempts to form a bond with him by tattling on a fellow coworker who’s been spreading rumors about his sexuality. None of it works simply because Stevie has no choice in the matter. He is merely the pawn of his corporate overlords, dispatched to do their dirty work. He is “good people” but he cannot help Margie. When Margie realizes this, she lashes out in anger with a racist slam directed at Stevie’s East Asian girlfriend. Stevie storms off. Offstage, a door slams

Margie is left alone in the alley. She has no job, limited prospects of finding a new one, and rent is due.

David Lindsey Abaire’s Good People focuses on one of the thorniest subjects in American culture: the concept of meritocracy. Work hard and study hard and you can achieve anything. This is the land of opportunity where anyone can be a millionaire. The unstated implication in that concept is that if one is not a millionaire, it’s because they didn’t work hard enough. They made the wrong choices. They weren’t studious enough. It’s their fault and their fault alone.

In a cheaply furnished sitting room Margie plays cards with her landlady and neighbor Dottie and best friend Jean. As they play, they talk about the job market and what Margie can do to pay the rent. Jean mentions that she ran into Mike at an event she was catering. Mike, an ex-boyfriend of Margie’s, is a Southie boy who’s done good. He’s a hugely successful doctor, who sits on charity boards. He lives in a gorgeous house in Boston’s tony Chestnut Hill neighborhood which is so removed from Margie’s milieu that she needs directions on how to get there using public transportation. Jean suggests that Margie drop in on Mike at his office and try to get him to give her a job. Margie reluctantly agrees.

This revival of Good People on stage at Theater Wit is produced by 4 Chairs Theatre. Lauren Berman directs, and just as in her wonderful production of Four Places last season, she cedes the spotlight to her actors and the script. The same applies to scenic designer Kevin Rolf’s simple yet clever set: an enormous shipping container dominates the space. The front of it slides open to reveal Margie’s humble sitting room at one end and Mike’s posh living room at the other. It’s an elegant way to indicate the thinness of the membrane separating these two fates. When the three women and Stevie play Bingo at the local Catholic church, they’re clustered around a small folding table at the front of the stage. When Margie visits Mike’s house in Chestnut Hill in Act II, his expensive sofa spills over into her half of stage; his world expanding while hers constricts.

The cast is splendid across the board. Maggie Cain’s acerbic and pessimistic Dottie and Wendy Hayne’s abrasive Jean provide excellent comic relief throughout. Steven Horn is charming as the socially awkward, Bingo-loving Stevie. The Southie characters are beautifully sketched out and the actors have a warm lived-in chemistry that enriches their scenes together. The only blip in the show comes with Kate, Mike’s wealthy wife. Sandra Adjoumani, who was delightful as La Veuve in last season’s The House That Will Not Stand at Invictus, is a fine actress but the part is so thinly shaded that there’s not much she can do with Kate other than give her a stately dignity. Adjoumani does the best that can be done with the part, and she has excellent chemistry with Kingsley, but Kate is less of a character than a construct, created to be the antithesis of Margie, and the seams show.

Ultimately this is the Margie and Mike show and Jodi Kingsley and Bryan Breau are fantastic. As Mike, Breau turns in a beautifully modulated performance creating a portrait of a man blithely unaware of his privileges and the role that luck has played in his success. I especially loved how his Southie accent gets more pronounced when Margie successfully baits him and recedes when he feels like he’s in control of the situation. Mike is handsome, charming and witty. He’s also smug, insincere, and condescending, and the best compliment I can give Breau’s performance is that I wanted to punch him in the face about ten times over the course of 90 minutes. There’s a line in the first act where he leans back and asks, “Did you get mean, Margie? I hope you’re still nice.”

I wanted to hurl a chair at the back of his head.

Jodi Kingsley must have whooped for joy when she landed the role of Margie. It’s a terrific part — Frances McDormand won a Tony for it in the original Broadway production — and she does a terrific job with it. Margie is a quick-tempered, defensive woman. She’s easy to offend and her abrasiveness and willingness to lash out at the slightest provocation make her a difficult person to like. But we are always on Margie’s side and that’s because Kingsley never lets us forget that it is desperation and fear that drives Margie’s behavior. Margie is a proud woman who cannot afford her pride and the constant abasement that she endures to make ends meet has curdled her.

The meeting between Margie and Mike in his office is one of the most beautifully written and excruciatingly cringe scenes I’ve watched on stage, with Margie twisting in her chair in discomfort, pleading, bargaining, flirting, and baiting Mike in equal measure. The play leans into melodrama a bit in the second act with a revelation that comes straight out of a soap opera — lampshading it does not excuse it — but the actors make it work. Even more, they make it sing.

Good People takes a shot at one of the most persistent myths of American society: the myth of equal opportunity. In a beautiful monologue, Margie recounts to Kate a horrific incident of racial violence from her shared youth with Mike, pointing out to Mike that if it weren’t for a single moment, when someone looked out of the window at precisely the right time, he would likely not have had the life he has. He would be stuck in Southie, bouncing from low-paying job to low-paying job, always one paycheck away from disaster. Just like she is. It is a thought Mike is not willing to entertain because to even consider its validity would upend his world view.

Had Good People stopped there it would already be wonderful but Abaire goes further and darker. Despite knowing better, Margie wants to believe that she is the one solely responsible for the mess that her life is in. She needs to believe that had she made different choices, she could be the one living in Chestnut Hill, married to a handsome doctor, or not. She wants to believe that she had that choice and it’s her fault for not taking a different road in life, because she cannot countenance the alternative: that regardless of the choice she could have made, her life would turn out exactly the same.

That for some people, good or not, the American Dream is just that: a dream.

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photos by Gregory Metzler