BWW Reviews: The Rep Redefines Stunning and Surprising GOOD PEOPLE

Surprises abound in Milwaukee Rep's Good People on stage at the Quadracci Powerhouse this winter. Pulitzer Prize-winning David Lindsay-Abaire's award-winning 2011 drama features one of the Midwest's favorite actresses Laura Gordon in the title role of Margie Walsh. A single mother living in South Boston trying to survive, to work and care take her adult, but severely mentally challenged, daughter Joyce.

Margie Walsh redefines a microcosm of what might fast become a new normal across America. In Lindsay-Abaire's script, Walsh could represent the single women and children, especially those with slight or severe disabilities, struggling to make ends meet so the basic necessities of life can be purchased, much less enjoyed. Women and children define the largest proportion of "good people" living in poverty today, with this distinction growing greater each year.

With the spectra of Lindsay-Abaire's hometown Boston hovering over the production, the indomitable and phenomenal Laura Gordon embodies Margie's "Southie" character, a woman chided by her friends for being "too nice," a girl raised in a rougher, low income section of South Boston. Surrounded by her still Southie friends, Dottie, (a delightfully recalcitrant Laura T. Fisher) and the outspoken Jean (a feisty Tami Workentin), the three women filter their lives through humor and bingo nights. Nights spent to win extra money that might pay Margie's rent because she lost her job at the Dollar Store where she made just over minimum wage, another job lost due to the difficulties in living with Joyce.

Enter Mickey D.---an old boyfriend played by the charming debuting actor Michael Elich, who lived in the Boston Harbor projects and dated Margie before he left to find success at college after a chance encounter with Jean reconnects them. Eventually his present life as a medical specialist, a reproductive endocrinologist, entices Margie to ask Mike for a job which reignites the discrepancies in how they view their childhoods and their current incomes, their status, displayed in their two different houses and educational paths.

Directing this dream cast rounded out with Bernard Balbot and Jennifer Latimore, Kate Buckley returns toThe Rep and reigns in these characters' conversations on stage to represent "real people," expressing actual emotions, so this powerful drama can seep into the audience's head and hearts. Margie claims when Mike and she lived in South Boston, while uncomfortable, their childhood was not miserable. Mike disagrees and with a sizable home in the upscale Boston suburb Chestnut Hill, he has no desire to remember or relive his past. What defines the differences in these two friends and their fortunes?

"You had someone watching you through the window. You had a father, and he worked. There was no one watching me," Margie responds to Mike's accusations she made her own choices. The Rep asks this question to the audience: How critical can this be for children, and also many adults, to have someone watching over them to keep them from making even minor mistakes, if possible, in their lives, to assure they will do well?

Mike sites the Boys and Girls Clubs in Boston helped him overcome his upbringing in the Harbor projects while playwright Lindsay-Abaire also claims Boston Boys and Girls Club eased his transition into adulthood, the production based in fact on where he grew up. Yet, countless people, many women including his Margie, work hard without anyone watching over them until a crucial moment, a job loss, an unexpected car repair, or increased insurance premiums, sends there life into chaos, like Cookie in this particular play, placing them at risk. Who offers Margie assistance is only one surprise.

This stunning must-see Rep production, staged in simplicity by Kevin Depinet, was relevant in 2011 yet rings far more true three years later when the debate regarding minimum wage and the middle class rages. What factors define which children or individuals will succeed in life? Only a few may step into the roles of surgical specialist or award-winning playwright, yet every child deserves a chance to escape poverty. What will, if anything, in the 21st century redefine those alarming statistics haunting the country regarding the discrepancy between poverty and wealth?

With this play rich in humor amid the twists and turns Margie's and Mike's lives will take, the audience will wonder who and where are "the good people?" Who has the "good life?" Do they have someone to watch over them? Milwaukee's own Boys and Girls Club contributes to the success of children in this city, and the organization needs to be remembered when those windows on the world in any neighborhood remain forlorn and empty.

The Rep's emotional and magnificent Good People, moving in its timely message, provokes Milwaukee into redefining luck, success and the choices and chances in life everyone must make. The answers Good People presents might truly surprise the audience.

Milwaukee Rep presents Good People at the Quadracci Powerhouse in the Patty and Jay Baker Theater Complex through February 15. For information on the performances or special programming, please call 414.224.9490 or www.milwaukeerep.com

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