GOOD PEOPLE - Review

When I saw "August: Osage County" on Broadway back in 2007, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, I realized that an entirely new genre in theater had arrived. No longer entertaining or emotionally moving, now we were being exposed to somewhat cynical domestic dramas. Author David Lindsay-Abaire, born in South Boston, is grimly determined to reveal the pain in everyday life in this poor area. He was privy to the desolation and crushing of spirits among the people there, and he certainly brings that to our attention in this often bleak but also amusing comedy-drama.

 As reported formerly: " Margie is a white woman from the working-class neighborhood of South Boston. She’s a single mom caring for a grown, severely autistic daughter. Mike, her former high school beau, has gotten out of South Boston, become an M.D., and moved to the tony suburb of Chestnut Hill with his beautiful Black wife and their daughter. Now Margie has recently been fired from her job and is facing eviction. Some friends at the local church Bingo game suggest that she look up her old fling and ask him for a job. When Margie arrives at his doorstep, what will she ask and what will he do?"

 

Yes, this is a play that resounds today as its about contrasts, about those who 'make it' and those who don't. It's casting an eye on the unlucky in life and the now privileged, and what happens when they collide because of a long ago claim of kinship. It's so now when in essence one character says, in pleading desperation - you have all the luck, and I had all the hard knocks - now help me… and if you won't then I'll bring you down - maybe!

We are flies on the wall when Margie (a quixotically funny but tragic Alison Blanchard) is first mistaken for a domestic by the elegant Black lady of the house (a dazzling Charlotte Williams Roberts) in an ironic turnaround. We see the embarrassment and resentment that her old boyfriend, now a successful doctor (seething volcano Scott Facher) is driven to by his buried past. The scene between these three is riveting and the alternate pleading, threatening, placating, resounds through the house.   

The lead up to this confrontation is adroitly brought to life by clever director Ann Hearn Tobolowsky. My only concern is that much of the dialogue was lost due to the intimacy between the actors, especially Facher and Blanchard, who dug so deeply into their battle that they forgot they were onstage in a theatre, not in an actual living room.

Let's not overlook the rest of this excellent cast: Michael Kerr was wonderfully bewildered as a man caught in the crossfire between work and compassion; Suzan Solomon was delightfully casual as a friend with some clever suggestions, and Mariko Van Kampen was airily ditzy as a landlady with no heart of gold. Photos by Amir Kojoory and Eric Keitel.

Produced by David Hunt Stafford for Theatre 40, in the Reuben Cordova Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Free Parking. Strict Covid protocols. Tickets: (310) 364-0535 or  www.theatre40.org