BWW Reviews: Gamm's Fantastic GOOD PEOPLE Perfectly Examines America's Economic Crisis

Recently, a friend mentioned his girlfriend's exciting new "big promotion and raise." Providing more details, he added that she would now be making close to thirty-five thousand per year. This could not help but make me wonder about the state of our country's current economic and employment crises. It is clear that a "new normal" has been established in the United States, where the vast majority scrape by, just surviving, mostly by working hourly-wage, low-paying jobs. Where once the dream was a comfortable, secure, middle-class or even upper-middle-class-life, that life no longer exists for many, if not most. It's been replaced by a much less secure or comfortable existence that fewer and fewer have the hope to climb out of. This predicament is perfectly brought to very real life by David Lindsay-Abaire's play Good People, playing at the Sandra Feinstein Gamm Theatre.

Lindsay-Abaire's play is a nearly perfect piece of writing for the stage. It's story centers on Margaret, a lifelong resident of the Boston neighborhood called Southie. Living with her adult daughter who is mentally disabled, Margaret scrapes by with a job at the dollar store. When she loses that job, due to being late too many times, she must scramble to find a new source of income where jobs and opportunities are increasingly hard to come by. An opportunity presents itself when she finds out an old high-school friend, and one-time flame, is working in the area as a doctor.

What happens after Margaret Approaches Mike, the doctor, for a job, creates a tidal wave of emotions and conflict that threatens to consume them, and Mike's wife, Kate. Issues that flow to the surface include wealth, class, success, failure, disappointment, truth, lies, race, luck, choices and whether or not any of us really can escape the world we grow up in. There's a lot going on and Lindsey-Abaire juggles it perfectly, through the use of finely crafted and well-developed characters, for the most part. There are a couple of supporting characters who are mostly plot devices, but the trio of Margaret, Mike and Kate, are complex and complicated people, and the playwright never tries to take sides. He only presents their story and leaves it up to the audience to decide. He also never lets the play devolve into nothing more than a screaming match or a loud argument full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The screaming or fighting that does happen is always grounded in real people, true emotion and believable situations.

Director Rachel Walshe steers the ship over the waves and mostly does a very nice job. There are moments where she uses distances and levels to heighten or lessen the tension as necessary. She also employs pauses, possibly inherent in the script, to excellent effect. On the other hand, there are too many moments that look very much like an actor thinking, "The director told me to move here on this line." That kind of blocking just never works and never feels organic.

Right in the middle of this socioeconomic storm is Margaret, played by the always stellar Jeanine Kane. There are a select few professional actresses working in our region who command a stage the way that Kane does. She brings impressive amounts of energy and life to every one of her roles and each of them is a totally unique, completely real individual. In her first production at the Gamm is Mia Ellis as Kate, the doctor's wife. Ellis is a new member of the resident Acting Company at Trinity Rep and she will no doubt be an exciting actress to watch in the future. Her performance here is a pure joy to watch as she handles the role of a woman who gets pulled into the play's central conflict and finds out she may or may not really know her husband.

That husband is played by the excellent Bill Mootos. It's an interesting character who could easily be written off as "the bad guy." Lindsey-Abaire won't let him or the audience off that easily, though, and has given his actor a much more complicated role to play. Mootos handles it perfectly. There is also a fine supporting cast, led by the wonderful Casey Seymour Kim as Jean. She has carved out a niche as someone who perfectly fills these kinds of character roles. Her Jean is a sassy, sarcastic, snarky Southie resident who you might hate and then really want to have a beer with. Marc Dante Mancini and Margaret Melozzi fill out the cast as Steve and Dottie. They are mostly there just to move the plot and story forward, which is fine. Mancini and Melozzi do a superior job with the material they are given and Melozzi has some of the play's most hilarious moments.

There are definitely those kinds of moemnts to be found here, where you will laugh-out-loud. On the other hand, there are moments that will have you gasping or possibly on The Edge of tears. It's a play that puts a microscope onto our society and brings society's problems and failures to full focus, up close and personal. Even though it takes place in Southie, which provides some detail and color to the story and characters, the play really could take place in any city, anywhere in the country. Wherever they are, whether the people there are "good people" or not, they are in the same predicament as these characters. For that and many reasons, it's one of the most important plays of our time, and one that should not be missed.

Good People runs from Nobember 7 through December 8 at The Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange Street, Pawtucket, RI. Tickets are $38 and $48 (depending on day/time), preview and press performances (Nov. 7 - 11) are just $28. Discounts for subscribers, groups of 10 or more, seniors and students. Tickets at 401-723-3266 or gammtheatre.org.

Pictured: Bill Mootos and Jeanine Kane. Photo by Peter Goldberg.

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