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Theatre in Review: Good People (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)

David Lindsay-Abaire has turned out to be one of the theatre's most intriguing multiple personalities. Establishing himself as the author of quirky comedies such as Fuddy Meers and Wonder of the World, he then threw a real curveball, nabbing a Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Hole, an intensely focused drama about a marriage under siege following the death of a child. Next, further mixing it up, he turned out the libretto to Shrek the Musical. However, none of the above provide suitable preparation for Good People, in which he maps out the complex terrain where America's poor and privileged exist simultaneously side by side and miles apart.

One thing linking most of Lindsay-Abaire's plays is a memorable leading female character, and, in Good People, we get the spiky, unflinching, vulnerable, and deeply angry Margaret. A native of South Boston, her entire life has been shaped by misfortune and low expectations. A youthful marriage collapsed, leaving her the sole support of a retarded daughter for three decades, moving from one dead-end job to another. She never lasts long in any of them, because the challenges of running her crisis-ridden life cause her to be perpetually late for work, thus making her Southie's least desirable employee.

As the curtain rises, Margaret is being dismissed from her position as cashier in a dollar store. Even worse, the man letting her go is Stevie, the son of an old friend. Margaret attempts to lighten the atmosphere by recalling a popular neighborhood anecdote, about the day Stevie's mother tried to shoplift a turkey from the supermarket by hiding it between her legs; when that doesn't work, she tries more direct tactics. "You're lucky your mother's dead," she tells Stevie.

At loose ends and worried about losing her apartment, Margaret takes the advice of her friend Jean and looks up Mike, an old beau who is now a successful physician and a home in the posh suburb of Chestnut Hill. She contacts him with a vague idea about getting a job in his office, but their encounter is quickly suffused with lightly comic, yet unmistakably hostile, undertones. When Mike suggests better things are in store for her, she scoffs, "Who can resist a middle-aged lady dressed in Goodwill?" Then again, Mike, who doesn't wear his success lightly or easily, is clearly more stung than he wants to admit when she slyly accuses of him having turned "lace-curtain" - the Irish-American's deadliest insult. By the end of their skirmish, she has wangled an invitation to a birthday party at his home.

Mike cancels the party when his daughter comes down with a bug, but Margaret, thinking that she's being shoved aside, shows up anyway, leading to a very genial, very tense, and very, very funny evening at home with Mike and his wife, Kate. In one of Lindsay-Abaire's more cunning moves, he holds back the information, until we meet her, that Kate is black and from a background of wealth and accomplishment. ("You can take the girl out of Georgetown, but you can't take Georgetown out of the girl," she remarks merrily, amusing nobody else in the room.)

Suddenly, we're in the middle of a most unexpected triangle: Margaret, stuck in misery and possessed of a prurient interest in Mike's success; Mike, whose unease causes him to hold everyone at arm's length; and Kate, who knows that a graduate degree and plenty of money are no defense against the perceptions of the world. "If it's any consolation, they think I'm the nanny," she notes, talking about her trips to the park with her light-skinned daughter.

The conversation becomes more fraught -- especially when Margaret reveals that one of Mike's colorful tales of growing up in Southie has its roots in an ugly racial incident. It becomes even tenser when, acting on Jean's bad advice, Margaret accuses Mike of fathering her daughter - which, technically, he could have if her daughter wasn't premature, as she has claimed all along.

It's to Lindsay-Abaire's credit that he understands that there is no tidy resolution to this situation, nor is there a simple answer to the question of who gets ahead and who gets left behind in the modern rat race. What Good People does make crystal clear, however, is that success and satisfaction are two totally different things, and both can be maddeningly elusive in socially divided, recession-wracked America.

Good People builds its arguments slowly, relegating most of its drama to the second act, and, as such, it's a script that can use special handling. Fortunately, Daniel Sullivan is on hand to guide an ace cast through its paces, making sure our interest in the characters never flags. Frances McDormand's Margaret is a many-splendored thing -- a woman of complex moods and motives with a wicked tongue to back them up. It's a performance where the eyes have it; note the rising panic in them as she struggles to hold on to a crummy job that doesn't allow her to pay her bills. Then again, consider the provocation that flares in them when she is skillfully torturing Mike. Later, when she begins to wonder about her own motives, they look haunted, as if Margaret is rushing to conclusions about herself that she'd rather not entertain. We don't get McDormand on stage all that often and this is one of her most accomplished performances.

She is matched every step of the way by Tate Donovan as Mike, bursting forth with good cheer and bad faith, a coiled anger never far from the surface. Renee Elise Goldsberry is sleekly, seamlessly ideal as Kate, who reaches out to help Margaret, and who also pronounces the most devastating judgment on her. Becky Ann Baker and Estelle Parsons are a priceless double act as Jean, Margaret's friend, and Dottie, her landlord and part-time minder of her daughter; listening to them flay the reputations of everyone they know provides a tartly amusing counterbalance to the play's darker themes. Patrick Carroll is also exactly right as Stevie, who can't understand why his frequent attendance at church bingo has led to the rumor that he's gay. ("I can't explain it," Jean says, coolly and definitely, tabling the discussion for all time.)

Another major plus factor is the production design. Good People shows off two of John Lee Beatty's greatest gifts - the ability to pack multiple locations on stage and a strong sense of place. The play has no fewer than five fully dressed sets, including an expansive living room for Mike and Kate; when the lights come up on Margaret's kitchen, you'll know exactly what part of the country you're in. (The swiftness of the scenes changes is simply remarkable.) Each is lit by Pat Collins in a way that subtly heightens the theatricality of each location. David Zinn's costumes --- including Margaret's tacky silver0-flecked party dress and Mike and Kate's aggressively casual a t-home wear -- are alert to the differences of class and position among the characters. Jill BC Duboff's sound design includes Irish-inflected rock music, a little girl's offstage cries, and the tolling of bells.

Good People airs its conflicts without solving them. Margaret ends up pretty much where she started, buoyed slightly by a thoroughly unexpected helping hand. But we have been given a clear, compassionate, and often surprisingly funny look at the way we manage the class system that so often we are reluctant to admit exists in these United States. --David Barbour


(8 March 2011)

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