Review Roundup: Manhattan Theater Club's GOOD PEOPLE

The Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere production of GOOD PEOPLE, a new American play by Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan opened today, March 3 at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street).

The production stars Becky Ann Baker (All My Sons, Assassins), Patrick Carroll (Broadway debut), Tate Donovan ("Damages," Amy's View), Emmy Award nominee Renée Elise Goldsberry ("One Life to Live," Rent), Oscar winner Frances McDormand (Fargo, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Almost Famous), and Oscar winner Estelle Parsons (August: Osage County, "Roseanne").

BroadwayWorld brings you selections from the reviews!

The New York Times (Review by Ben Brantley) says: "Discovering how Margie operates - and where she's coming from - is one of the more subtly surprising treats of this theater season...Whether it's Ms. Parsons's amiably avaricious landlady or Ms. Goldsberry's reflexively compassionate suburbanite, there's nothing pure about the goodness or badness of the folks who inhabit this play. This makes them among the most fully human residents of Broadway these days."

Variety (Review by Marilyn Stasio) says: "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 neighborood 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."

USA Today (Review by Elysa Gardner) says: "The cast - expertly directed by Daniel Sullivan, fresh off his triumphant The Merchant of Venice- surveys those challenges with an uncompromising humanity. As the lead character, Frances McDormand, miscast in a 2008 revival of The Country Girl, redeems herself with a blazingly authentic performance. Good People...is it's too thoughtful, moving and richly entertaining to be missed."

The Boston Globe (Review by Don Aucoin) says: "David Lindsay-Abaire's 'Good People,'...maps the fault lines of social class with a rare acuity of perception while also packing a substantial emotional wallop. Word by well-chosen word, Lindsay-Abaire weighs the cost of identities discarded and constructed, of upward mobility with all its complications and contradictions, of memory when it turns selective and self-serving, of sacrifices made but unacknowledged, of choices that are not choices at all."

The Wall Street Journal (Review by Terry Teachout) says: "'Good People' is, or purports to be, a study of life in Southie, a down-at-heel Boston neighborhood beloved of movie stars who think they can do the local accent...in Mr. Lindsay-Abaire's America, success is purely a matter of luck, and virtue inheres solely in those who are luckless. "Good People" is a choice example of his wares, a supersafe play that takes supremely great care to tell its viewers only what they want to hear."

The Hollywood Reporter (Review by David Rooney) says: "Bringing the same clear-eyed emotional observation that distinguished his Pulitzer winner, Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire has crafted another penetrating drama about deeply relatable issues, albeit this time with more warming doses of humor...[A scene 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."

Financial Times (Review by Brendan Lemon) says:  David Lindsay-Abaire's new play at Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway space, begins with the main character, Margaret, telling a joke so hoary I thought the intention was not hilarity but irony. But no: in this engaging, cliché-marred story of working-class blues in south Boston, irony, like the white wine Margaret is served when she visits a former boyfriend, Mike, at his fancy suburban home, is the preserve of the well-to-do. . . . That the production, cannily directed by Daniel Sullivan, holds our attention has a lot to do with Lindsay-Abaire's ability to make us care about characters who are all, in some way, morally compromised. Helpful, too, is the presence of McDormand, an actor extraordinarily lacking in vanity. Her ability to locate emotional interstices and hidden jokes in any scene is miraculous.

AM New York (Review by Matt Windman) says:Good People" actually surpasses "Rabbit Hole"- which at times felt like an annoying Lifetime television movie - on numerous levels. . . .The play is consistently funny, topical, well-structured, and insightful on class mobility and prejudice. Director Daniel Sullivan brings out strong performances from the entire cast, including an eccentric turn from Estelle Parsons as Margie's chain-smoking landlord and a fiery performance with a combative edge by [Frances] McDormand.

Newsday (Review by Linda Weiner) says: 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. . . . The Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright ("Rabbit Hole"), along with director Daniel Sullivan and a splendid six-actor cast, keeps finding the sting that happens when salt-of-the-earth sentimentality rubs on the real bruises of life. . . . [Frances McDormand] once again turns a kaleidoscopically honest lack of pretense into something both breezy and exquisite. . . . Nobody is spared -- with condescension toward no one -- in this multi-scene tale of two Bostons, each neatly established b designer John Lee Beatty. . . . Unlike "Rabbit Hole," which I found a glum domestic melodrama, "Good People" finds ways to fold Lindsay-Abaire's lovely nutty sde into the pain. The play also makes clear that Lindsay-Abaire has given major and lesser-known actresses some of the most intelligent, unconventional female characters in the theater today. The ones here may be good people, but they're nobody's fools. Bottom Line: Breezy but gripping tragicomedy and terrific Frances McDormand.

New York Post (Review by Elisabeth Vincentelli) says:Good People" [is] the wonderful new play by David Lindsay-Abaire. . . . Luckily, this isn't a manipulative tear-jerker or a simplistic diatribe. "Good People" is poignant, brave and almost subversive in its focus on what it really means to be down on your luck. . . . 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.

Bloomberg News (Review by Jeremy Gerard) says: As Margaret, Frances McDormand reveals a gift for conveying epiphanies with quicksilver movements -- tics that register like lightning bolts. Simply arching her eyebrows can charge the atmosphere with the air of Margaret's desperation. . . . 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.

NY1 (Review by Roma Torre): Playwright David Lindsay Abaire, whose drama "Rabbit Hole" won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back, is once again taking us down some emotionally deep turf. And he couldn't have asked for a better company to turn his "Good People" into great theatre. . . . Meticulously plotted and designed, Daniel Sullivan's sensitive production yields multiple revelations. This is a play that'll prompt deep discussion about ourselves and our national identity. . . . Frances McDormand finds nuances in every syllable, delivering a mesmerizing performance as a plucky casualty of the culture wars. "Good People" is successful on many levels. It's a cultural critique, engrossing soap opera and an enlightening chronicle of life in America's underbelly. Good plays entertain, but "Good People" is even better, the kind that makes you think and feel as well.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

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