Good People Broadway Reviews

Under Daniel Sullivan's sensitive direction, the cast -- including the wryly sharp Estelle Parsons and Becky Ann Baker as Margie's landlady and best friend, respectively -- gives us fully rounded characters that never fall into caricature. Indeed, the play is often very funny, but never at the expense of its ill-starred characters. It's that generosity that makes 'Good People' a good show.

Following up on his masterful work earlier this season on The Merchant of Venice, Sullivan connects to the heart of each of the play's six pithy scenes in his brisk, no-nonsense direction. His scene changes are a marvel of economy, accompanied by bursts of Pogues-style Irish jigs as the masking shrinks into an iris and reopens on a new setting. One such transition -- in which designer John Lee Beatty's chic, spacious living room for Mike and Kate gives way to the shabby walls and overhead crucifix of a church hall on bingo night -- is a gorgeous stroke of stage magic that speaks volumes. The same goes for every aspect of this terrific play in what must surely be its ideal production.

If 'Good People' isn't a hit for Manhattan Theater Club, there is no justice in the land. David Lindsay-Abaire pays his respects to his old South Boston neighborhood with this tough and tender play about the insurmountable class divide between those who make it out of this blue-collar Irish neighborhood and those who find themselves left behind. The scrappy characters have tremendous appeal, and the moral dilemma they grapple with -- is it strength of character or just a few lucky breaks that determines a person's fate? -- holds special significance in today's harsh economic climate.

In the current economy of scaled-back American dreams, when the role of class is too often dismissed, Good People has a quality rarely seen on Broadway: It seems necessary.

The pitch perfect cast paints a reality that bristles with edgy truth. The brilliant Estelle Parsons is dead-on, supplying comic relief as Margie’s low-class landlady. Tate Donovan is sensational, oozing conflicted impulses as a man desperate to shed his Southie skin. His liberal wife, far more comfortable in her skin, is nicely played by Renee Elise Goldsberry with both passion and restraint. And Frances McDormand finds nuances in every syllable, delivering a mesmerizing performance as a plucky casualty of the culture wars.

David Lindsay-Abaire calls his new play, simply, 'Good People.' Like everything in this deceptively amiable, stealthily gripping tragicomedy, however, the words are less plain than they first let on.

Memorably played by Frances McDormand with a potent mix of prickly aggression and bruised-feeling withdrawal, Margaret is a middle-aged woman in South Boston's Lower End. At the start of the play, she is fired from the dollar store where she works due to her perpetual tardiness — she's usually late because of a grown daughter with serious development issues still living at home. This is a woman who has made serious sacrifices in her life — as the events of this remarkable and timely new play make clear.

Embodied with an ideal balance of expertise and empathy by Frances McDormand, Margie (as her friends call her, using a hard “g”) is the not-quite heroine of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People,” the very fine new play that opened Thursday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. And discovering how Margie operates — and where she’s coming from — is one of the more subtly surprising treats of this theater season.

Designer John Lee Beatty’s sets include a church basement, Margie’s cluttered kitchen and a handsome arts-and-crafts style living room. Like everything else about Manhattan Theatre Club’s world premiere of “Good People,” Beatty’s artistry appears unassuming but is right on the money.

Lindsay-Abaire muddies things with late reveals that make you wonder if, to use Margie's favorite phrase, she or Mike are 'good people.' You'll change your mind and then change it again on both of them.

The excellent cast is rounded out by a few Southie denizens. Margie's money-grubbing landlady and so-called friend, Dottie, is played with a steely-eyed twinkle by the inimitable Estelle Parsons. Becky Ann Baker plays Margie's equally belligerent but supportive friend, Jean, and Patrick Carroll is sweetly sensitive as Stevie, a decent younger man who tries to help Margie despite her rudeness toward him.

Rabbit Hole, which he adapted for a 2010 film, focused on an attractive, accomplished couple whose seemingly charmed life was shattered by the accidental death of their 4-year-old son. In contrast, the central figure in Lindsay-Abaire's excellent new play, Good People (* * * ½ out of four), is a woman for whom things can only get better.

It’s a given that we don’t talk about class in this country, so it’s hardly surprising that we don’t see a lot of plays about it. (We don’t see many plays, period, but that’s a different, if related, matter.) David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People — the latest in his Rabbit Hole realism phase — isn’t exactly an Odetsian war cry. But simply by broaching the subject of haves and have-nots, it will make a stir: Prepare for overpraise for “bravery” and abuse for not going further, for ending on a note perilously close to magical complacency. Whatever. Good People is a fine, small, heartfelt work that shadowboxes with social darkness in a safely lit room, floating on a vast sea of unsaid things.

Tate Donovan proves a fine foil as Mike, highlighting the character's conflicting feelings of relief at escaping a dead-end life and guilt at no longer being a true Southie. As Kate, Renée Elise Goldsberry is best when scrambling to avoid the inadvertent cultural condescension this highly educated daughter of an African-American doctor keeps stumbling into with Margaret. Goldsberry then scores when Kate suddenly shows spine and maturity as she nails Margaret for putting her pride ahead of her daughter's well-being. Estelle Parsons makes Dottie into an engagingly colorful sideshow of eccentricities, Becky Ann Baker is a convincingly curdled Jean, and Patrick Carroll smartly stresses Stevie's decency, though the character is largely a plot device.

Director Daniel Sullivan can’t finesse the play’s contrivances. Chief among them is the familiar setup of a confrontation between a proud denizen of the old neighborhood and the successful striver who escaped while clinging to a highly selective, even romanticized, version of his rough-and- tumble childhood. But John Lee Beatty’s evocative sets and Pat Collins’s pale verismo lighting lift the show above the norm.

Herein lies part of the phoniness of 'Good People.' Of course people like Margie and Mikey exist, but I doubt it's a coincidence that they are exactly the kinds of people who fit into the familiar sociological narrative that permeates every page of this play. In Mr. Lindsay-Abaire's America, success is purely a matter of luck, and virtue inheres solely in those who are luckless. So what if Mikey worked hard? Why should anybody deserve any credit for working hard? Hence the crude deck-stacking built into the script of 'Good People,' in which Mikey is the callous villain who forgot where he came from and Margie the plucky Southie gal who may be the least little bit racist (though she never says anything nasty to Mikey's wife—that would be going too far!) but is otherwise a perfect heroine-victim.