Review: 4 Chairs Theatre's GOOD PEOPLE at Theater Wit

Socioeconomic struggles are tales as old as time that span across zip codes and identities, and that is clearly found in Southie, David Lindsay-Abaire’s hometown and the setting for his 2011 play Good People. Under the gripping direction of 4 Chairs Theatre founder Lauren Berman, Good People takes us into the blue-collar heart of South Boston and the residents who can’t catch a break — and those who can. 

Good People starts off with Margie (Jodi Kingsley) getting fired by her boss Stevie (Steven Horn) from her Dollar General cashier job for being too late too many times. As she laments about finding a job and reminisces with her friend Jean (Wendy Hayne) and landlady Dottie (Maggie Cain), she learns that an old high school ex Mike (Bryan Breau) is now a doctor. In a desperate attempt to secure a job so she can pay rent and care for her adult, handicapped daughter Joyce, she reconnects with Mike and eventually meets his wife, Kate (Sandra Adjoumani). As Margie struggles to see how she can improve her financial situation, old secrets come out and the veil gets lifted on the people we think of as good and nice. 

Margie is stubborn, tough, yet vulnerable. As an extremely compelling and multifaceted anti-heroine, Jodi Kingsley delivers powerfully charged monologues and masterful arguments where she lies and manipulates to get what she wants — but that’s because that’s how she’s learned to survive. Kingsley captures the many nuances behind Margie with delicate realism, portraying with a pained heart the chain reaction of how being a caretaker can affect your minimum wage job which is tied to your health insurance which means a medical emergency causes you to fall behind on rent — which you can’t pay because you’re let go from yet another job. It’s the vicious cycle of capitalism and poverty that towns such as Southie and its residents can’t escape, except for the lucky few like Mike.

In the first scene, Mike presents as a polite, put-together, respectable doctor. However, in the second act, we see all the rage and unprocessed trauma from his past boil to the surface. Breau does a wonderful job unraveling Mike’s present happy facade as memories of Southie poke through the cracks, with his Boston accent slipping through as the stress rises (with a special shoutout to Carrie Hardin as the dialect coach for all the strong Southie accents from the entire cast).

Hayne puts so much rough bravado behind the strong personality that is Jean as she bickers and shares her advice and memories. As Dottie, Cain also provides many of the comedic beats with her matter-of-fact and sometimes oblivious statements, observations, and questions, on top of her rabbit crafts with prop design from Emma Jean Golden. 

The creative set design from Kevin Rolfs using sliding doors on a shipping container creates a nice visual split between Margie’s cramped house on one side and Mike’s comfortable house on the other. Kate also acts as a stark contrast to the life that the old friends from Southie come from, with her literature degree and cheese plate exemplifying knowledge gaps between their different worlds. Adjoumani gives Margie more warmth and compassion than you would expect, but as the Black wife that Margie is surprised to see, Kate holds her own and remains firm in confronting Margie and the stories she spins. The play ends with a final twist that profoundly reshapes how we understand Margie’s relationship to Mike and what it means to be “good people.”

This production of Good People from 4 Chairs Theatre is simultaneously heavy and touching thanks to the sharp writing, strong acting, and powerful direction that shines a hard light on the economic struggles many families face. It is the way that race, class, gender, education, family, and ability all intersect to frame the way we view the world and influence the decisions we make. Lindsay-Abaire doesn’t shy away from confronting the racism in these towns either, whether it’s in the “harmless” remarks and jabs Margie casually makes or the violent story we learn of Mike beating up a Black boy when he was in high school. Corporations and certain politicians pit blue-collar communities against each other — not just by race, but also class, with a natural hierarchy even among the working class because even those struggling have to believe they’re better off than someone else. 

Good People is an interesting exploration of how much the environments we grow up in influence the opportunities we get, the choices we make, and what we believe is even possible. Mike argues from the “pull yourself up by the bootstrap” narrative while Margie firmly believes her future was doomed as soon as she was born in Southie. They pit individual hard work against the collective system that impoverishes communities. Margie tries to tear down Mike’s success as a form of betrayal of his roots. As we listen to their arguments and learn more about their morals and logical fallacies in how they interact with society, the shame surrounding their town and upbringing comes to the surface, revealing how they have — or haven’t — processed that shame. 

At the end, there is no clear hero or antagonist in this story. There are only humans doing what they must to get by, move on, and survive in an economy and country that so often discards them. 

Good People plays at Theater Wit (1229 W. Belmont) through August 23. General Admission tickets are $38.

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