South Boston is more than 2,500 miles away.
But it’s coming to our backyard, courtesy of Winding Road Theatre Ensemble’s absorbing production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People.”
South Boston, where the play takes place, is weighed down with poverty and desperation, and Margie, who lives in the neighborhood, knows both.
She’s been fired from her job at a dollar store, her rent is due and she doesn’t know where she’ll get the money to pay it, and she has a daughter with disabilities who needs care and attention.
Maybe a one-time boyfriend, a guy she knows is “good people,” could offer help. Mike is one of the lucky ones to escape South Boston and is now a well-off doctor. She doesn’t land a job with him, but she fanagles an invitation to his home, where the idea that he is “good people” is sorely tested.
This production takes place in the 30-seat Scoundrel & Scamp theater, and the intimacy underscores the intensity of the story. It’s near impossible to not feel Margie’s fear, to be wounded by the cruelty and touched by the kindness in the play.
This cast has embraced the powerful script and infused it with full life:
- Maria Caprile’s Margie is funny and heartbreaking. Her discomfort in the presence of her former boyfriend and his wife will set your palms sweating. Her dedication to her daughter, whom we never see, is clear. The moments that Margie turns verbally vicious never seem barbaric. Caprile so fully inhabits the character that every moment, every movement, is understandable.
- Just as riveting is Peg Peterson as Margie’s friend landlady. There’s something cruel in her relentless reminding that if Margie doesn’t cough up the rent she and her daughter are on the street. But there are also softer moments to the character, and Peterson gave us both.
- Toni Press-Coffman’s Jean has a hard edge and a deep loyalty to her friend, and Press-Coffman breathed full life into her.
- Josh Parra’s Stevie, the boss who fires Margie and a fellow Bingo player, is unsure and kind and packed with empathy. Yes, he fires her, but we love him for his heart and his lack of guile.
- Carley Elizabeth Preston has an elegance and a fury as Kate, the ex-boyfriend’s wife.
- And that ex-boyfriend was, after all, not good people. Tony Caprile charmed us and repulsed us.
Glen Coffman directed the play with a confidence and deep empathy for the characters and the story.
“Good People” is good theater, especially in the hands of this company.
