David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People” presents audiences with a window into the lives of the working poor of South Boston, known as “Southies.” The Seattle Rep-George Street Playhouse co-production opens as Margaret (Ellen McLaughlin), a middle-aged high school dropout with no marketable skills and a mentally disabled adult daughter to support, is fired from her minimum-wage job at the Dollar Store. To add insult to injury, the supervisor who fires her is the son of one of Margaret’s peers.
It may not sound like the makings of a comedy. But like his earlier plays (“Fuddy Meers,” “Rabbit Hole”), Lindsay-Abaire manages to interject humor alongside the pathos with his unsentimental but sympathetic portrait of a community where poverty is the only legacy passed from parent to child, a legacy that few can turn around. Lindsay-Abaire was able to escape his own South Boston upbringing through a combination of ability and luck that provided him with a scholarship to prep school.
In the play, the escapee is Margaret’s former high school beau Mike (John Bolger), now a successful doctor. Margaret’s friends encourage her to look up Mike to see if he might have a job for her.
Driven by desperation and curiosity, Margaret first barges her way into Mike’s office and then finagles an invitation to his beautifully appointed home in the leafy suburbs of Chestnut Hill, where she is warmly welcomed by Mike’s gracious, young wife, Kate (radiant Zakiya Young), who is eager to learn more about her husband’s past.
Mike enjoys portraying himself as a tough boy from the projects who bootstrapped his way to success. He blames Margaret for engineering her own failures, while Margaret points out the elements of luck that contributed to Mike’s success. Their argument is a timely echo of the conflicting world views that currently fuel debate at the highest levels: the cherished American ideal of rags-to-riches vs. the realities of class immobility and stagnation, where winners and losers are as random in life as at the bingo games frequented by Margaret and her Southie friends.
Superb Seattle and NY cast
Director David Saint has assembled a superb cast of Seattle and New York actors. McLaughlin’s multi-layered performance as Margaret evokes toughness, fragility, insensitivity, gentleness, connivance and decency — sometimes all at the same time. Her wiry beauty works well in the role; dressed by costume designer David Murin in a dreadful pleather outfit, she slouches like an alley cat into Mike and Kate’s pristine living room.
As Mike, Bolger’s affable exterior conceals a palpable insecurity in Margaret’s presence; his voice shakes with suppressed emotion that moves us just when Mike is at his most despicable.
Tolerant, bright, sophisticated and gorgeous, the character of Kate is almost too good to be true. But the glint of cynicism in Young’s performance saves Kate from striking an unrealistic note among Lindsay-Abaire’s otherwise highly believable characters.
Margaret’s Southie buddies (Cynthia Lauren Tewes, Marianne Owen and Eric Riedmann) provide comic fodder with their South Boston accents, profane speech and ill-conceived advice. Tewes is particularly amusing as Margaret’s conniving and self-satisfied landlady. Although not all is happily-ever-after by the end of the play, Margaret and the Southies are revealed to indeed be “good people.”
James Youmans’ gorgeous set has us travelling with Margaret from South Boston to Chestnut Hill as screens with film projections of Boston neighborhoods slide across the stage. Scott Killian’s Celtic-tinged sound design transports us to the Irish-American community of South Boston.
Performances continue through March 31 at the Seattle Rep. In keeping with the playwright’s desire to make performances available to those who could not otherwise afford it, the “Dollar Store Deal” offers 25 $1 tickets to each performance. For more information, visit www.seattlerep.org.
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