Tara Morice and Christopher Stollery in Good People. Photo by Clare Hawley​.
What is good? It is a question that has plagued humanity ever since Eve convinced Adam to take that apple.
Are we so surprised, then, that David Lindsay-Abaire’s version of the age-old nature versus nurture epic still has currency in our contemporary times, where clarity of such definitions of good and bad are wrapped up in all kinds of social and ethical baggage.
Where Lindsay-Abaire gets it right is in his decision to situate the play within another raw territory that is sure to strike an uncomfortable nerve – class.
He asks: Do class and opportunity make you a better person?
As a piece of writing, Good People is as tight as a drum; tension and humour are played against each other superbly and, while it is wordy, it is pacey and grips the viewer with a sense of weight.
This play is highly awarded – nominated for 14 international theatre awards and winning 2011 New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for Best Play among others – and so the expectation is high.
In short, Mark Kilmurry delivered. As did Tara Morice in the lead role as Margaret – a girl from “Southie”, who bad luck seemingly follows.
The play opens as she is fired from her job at the Dollar Store. We journey with her as she grapples to meet rent and care for a disabled daughter. Bleak yes, but good – well Margaret gets a tick in this tale of judgement.
Drew Livingston and Tara Morice in Good People, photo by Clare Hawley; supplied​
In sharp contrast, Mike (Christorpher Stollery) has risen above the shackles of the low-end neighbourhood and is a successful doctor who has returned to the ritzy suburb of Chester Hill.
While hard work may liberate one from poverty, does that equate to the finding of “goodness”?
It is a searching question that Margaret persists with in the hope of reassurance: ‘Y’all good people Mickey, aren’t you?’, hitting a raw nerve when pushing Mike into the insult of forgetting his roots: ‘Y’all lace curtain Irish on me now.’
It is a bitter jealously that rises to the surface, caught between perception as victim and accepting responsibility for one’s own mistakes. But while Mike may be living the good life, he lives caught between past guilt and fear of his fragile house of shiny cards tumbling.
Stollery plays the role superbly and has a great rapport with Morice. There are few who could match the pairing of these two.
The flipside of judgment is prejudice, and Lindsay-Abaire takes on the taboos of sex and race in the next layer of his well-crafted characters.
The question is thrown on its head by Mike’s wife Kate (Zinzi Okenyo), an educated affluent Afro-American woman, who by all measures demonstrates more ‘good’ than Mike. That is until the subject of child-raring comes into question.
Tara Morice, Christopher Stollery and Zindzi Okenyo in Good People, photo by Clare Hawley; supplied
The play pivots on a party for Mike’s birthday, to which Margaret is invited more as a reaction to her needling of Mike – perhaps from her own insecurity to be accepted than vengeance.
But that is the delight of this play. Your reading of “good” may be entirely different to that of the person sitting next to you. There is not definitive answer to who is good or bad.
The parallel story is one of friendship and a kind of collegeate of the down-trodden, appropriately set within the local Bingo hall. Margaret’s former boss and Bingo buddy Stevie (Drew Livingston) persistently fights against his perceived sexual preference. ‘Plenty of men go to Bingo – I am not gay!’ he pleads.
Drew Livingston, Tara Morice, Jane Phegan and Gael Ballantyne, photo by Clare Hawley; supplied​
As the bad-guy resulting in Margaret’s unemployment, goodness finds hidden surprises in Stevie, offsetting “salt-of the-earth” class debates that are bookended by Mike and fellow neighbor Dottie (Gael Ballantyne).
Dottie repeatedly professes how good she is for minding Margaret’s daughter while threatening to throw her out of her home for unpaid rent. Jean (Jane Phegan) as Margaret’s bestie, sits as polar opposite, throwing again into contrast perceptions of what constitutes a good person.
The quality across this cast cannot be questioned – each to be celebrated for their character development and delivery.
Overall, this is a thoughtful play about opportunity and privilege, loyalty and honesty, and it leaves the viewer questioning their own barometer of good and scales of judgment. The fault lines are very close to the surface, but this finely tuned script leaves no sharp edges – only fresh consideration (of what could be a tired old topic) emerges from what Ensemble describes as:’a delicious cocktail of secrets, lies, class and race.
This cast and production will be well remembered as one of Ensemble Theatre’s best. It is not labored in any way and delivered without flaw.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Good People
Written: David Lindsay-Abaire
Director: Mark Kilmurry
Assistant Director: Priscilla Jackman (inaugural recipient of Sandra Bates Director’s Award)
Designer: Tobhiyah Stone Feller
Cast: Gael Ballantyne, Drew Livingston, Tara Morice, Zindzi Okenyo, Jane Phegan and Christopher Stollery
Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli
13 April – 21 May 2016
www.ensemble.com.au
