This is what the much-lauded American meritocracy looks like: urban, moral, and spiritual decay; an existence battered by the cruelty of Lady Luck, who wields the Sword of Damocles—always one misstep away from the abyss of abject poverty.
Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, who received the Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Hole (2007), captures all this and more in the Tony-nominated Good People. Through sharp comedy and even sharper drama, Lindsay-Abaire takes aim at the heart of the American mythos. What separates the upper crust from the street dweller? Inequality cannot be explained through mere appeals to ‘hard work’ and ‘innate talent.’ Instead, the play points to nothing more than the inscrutable calculus of chance. The message here is as frightening as it is liberating. Directed by Roy Surette, the play’s English-Canadian debut at Centaur Theatre is spectacular, a dizzying blend of acting prowess and technical virtuosity. Deeply funny and deeply moving—and at its best moments, both at once—Good People is a ‘must-see’ that lives up to the bill.
The story begins with a firing. Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of protagonist Margie’s woes. Between the demands of caring for a mentally ill adult daughter and a friendly but predatorial landlady, Margie is forced to turn to a childhood (more than) friend who made it big. The resulting narrative takes a magnifying glass to existing social divisions of class and race, but without political rhetoric. Instead, Lindsay-Abaire is humanistic. In another life, the playwright must have been a boxer; the script makes deft, light-footed movements with its comedy in order to land a few devastating upper-cuts on behalf of the downtrodden.
Johanna Nutter’s Margie is as sly as she is proud, and intensely authentic. The South Boston—or ‘Southie’—accent is as charming as its owner. Perpetually stuck between a rock and a hard place, Margie relies heavily on her resilience and conviction; Nutter’s nuanced and sympathetic performance conveys an inner strength that approaches the inspirational. Few actors can invoke bubbling joy one moment and utter heartbreak the next—Nutter wields such power confidently.
Unsurprisingly then, the best scenes of the play unite Margie with childhood sweetheart Mike (Paul Hopkins). The bittersweet and razor-sharp exchanges between the two are impeccably paced; both Hopkins and Nutter display an extraordinary affinity for comedic timing. Though the war of wits is uproarious, there is sharp, sore truth to the words, clearly reflective of the post-2008 socio-political atmosphere.
John C. Dinning’s set is a beautiful behemoth of brick and steel. Jagged chimneys punctuate the air, and the whole seems to capture the tiredness of the daily struggle. At the same time, it is supremely functional. One gets the impression that Dinning must be an origami champion, as walls fold and unfold to reveal various settings. Peter Spike Lyne’s lighting displays inventiveness—particularly daring is the incorporation of fluorescents, whose harshness are masterfully tamed by Lyne and channelled to great effect.
The climax sees the preceding exchange of retorts explode into a full-out blitzkrieg, a real race to inflict hurt and pain. There is a peculiar shift as the script trades the biting for the blunt, a metamorphosis from sitcom to soap opera. One-too-many surprise twists leave the piece dangerously close to mistreating its audience, but this should not be construed as a criticism of Centaur’s production so much as a failure of this critic to find more substantial flaws. There were simply none. Go see Centaur’s Good People, bask in the talent of its wonderful cast and crew, and reflect on the myth of the meritocracy, and what a just social order would truly mean.
Good People runs until Dec. 9 at Centaur Theatre (453 St. François-Xavier). Student tickets are $26.
