Photo credit: Greg Metzler.
What does it cost to be a good person? When the ties that bind people together in a capitalist society are made of dollars and cents, relationships inevitably turn to the transactional. In Good People, David Lindsay-Abaire wrestles with the conditions of our world through the microcosm of a working-class South Boston community whose neighborly bonds are frayed by the deterioration of a society individualized by its rat-race to grow wealth over wellbeing. Written in 2011, Good People is as relevant now as it was prescient then; revealing how the good in people emerges when money takes a back seat to empathy.
Lindsay-Abaire’s play is a poignant picture of a single woman, Margaret (Jodi Kingsley), struggling to take care of her adult special-needs daughter after being fired from her job by her boss and friend’s son, Stevie (Steven Horn). Supported by her fellow Southie community, made up of Dottie (Maggie Cain) and Jean (Wendy Hayne), she learns that an old high school boyfriend, Mike (Bryan Breau), has recently returned to Boston to open his practice as an endocrinologist. Margaret initially approaches him about a job, but without an open position to offer her, Mike reluctantly agrees to invite her to his birthday party so that she can rub elbows with his elite company in search of work. But when the party is cancelled, Margaret shows up anyway only to incite further strain on the relationship between Mike and his wife, Kate (Sandra Adjoumani). In the end, Margaret returns to her neighborhood to find that her support system is the people who share in her struggles and see her as the good person she truly is, not the circumstances she struggles against.
With a scenic design (by Kevin Rolfs) featuring a single shipping container on the stage, Good People transforms the symbol of a globalized economy into the confines that constrain working-class communities from accessing capital while, at the same time, conjuring a dreamscape of wealth for those who—to use the play’s framing—live comfortably enough that they view themselves as a net value to society. The brilliance of the shipping container shines when it is opened to reveal the two domestic spaces of Margaret and Mike placed in sharp dichotomy. Early in the play, we are witness to the drab and cramped conditions of Margaret’s living room, which is also filled with the familial trappings of close friends chatting around a table and crayon drawings taped to every wall.
In contrast, Mike’s living room is stark and sanitized. The only precious item is an artistic and expensive stone vase (props design by Emma Jean Golden) Mike gave to Kate as a “push present” in celebration of the birth of their daughter, further emphasizing the metaphor that certain lives manifest as wealthy. Margaret brings a gift with her for Mike that she feels will also resonate with his young daughter: a handmade, arts-and-crafts rabbit doll that Dottie made with the help of Margaret’s daughter. Dottie regularly makes individualized rabbits to sell around Southie. In contrast to the vase, the rabbits are cheap in their construction but far more personable and representative of the people behind the effort to produce them. But Mike destroys the rabbit when Margaret confronts him and Kate with her need for assistance in providing for her daughter, insinuating that their shared upbringing and, especially, their relationship—which ended just as Mike left for college at UPenn—might have something to do with her current situation. Margaret, in their judgment, is not a good person and undeserving of their help or sympathies.
4 Chairs Theatre is doing exactly what every theatre should be doing right now: presenting the stories of people trying to survive the crisis of a world that devalues their humanity. Under Lauren Berman’s excellent direction, Good People complicates the picture of purity tests in a system where money is a moral imperative. The humanity presented to us feels authentic but flawed: a raw portrayal of people in the midst of trauma caused not by a lack of effort toward change, but by being stuck in circumstances that are impossible to change. Jodi Kingsley delivers a dynamic and powerful portrait of a woman who is proud of who she is and sure in her abilities yet unable to affect the kind of changes necessary for reaching the ideals of motherhood set out by society. Maggie Cain and Wendy Hayne bring understated but hilarious levity to Margaret’s Southie circle of friends—every scene at the bingo hall is a riot!—while Bryan Breau and Sandra Adjoumani stand out for how quickly they can turn their noses up at Margaret’s antics, providing just the right antagonistic counterpoint to Margaret’s plans and pleas for help. And Steven Horn executes an exasperated energy at being the punching bag for the women of Southie that will, in the end, put the perfect period on the value of community over commodities in our current world.
Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire is highly recommended. The show runs through August 23rd. Performances are at Theater Wit and tickets can be purchased at the Theater Wit box office or by visiting 4chairstheatre.org.