"Good People"

July 9, 2015 — Vinette Cotter as Dottie and Jean Mar Brown as her friend Jean, a couple of frumpy, argumentative, bingo-addicted South Boston denizens pretty much stole the first act of David Lindsay-Abaire's "Good People" with their spot-on Southie accents and salty language. They evoked lots of laughter in the first act before the play turned much darker in the second.

My praise of Cotter and Brown in no way lessens the contribution of the rest of the fine cast of veteran performers at the Barnstormers Theatre in Tamworth, New Hampshire. Under the direction of Paul Mroczka, Dee Nelson plays the lead, Maggie, a single mother fired at the beginning of the play by her supervisor, Stevie (Buddy Haardt), for habitual tardiness due to having to care for her retarded adult daughter. Stevie is sympathetic, but has no choice. Maggie, with no college education and few skills, is now jobless and the rent is overdue.

Desperate, Maggie pays a visit to an old Southie school-mate, Mike (Blair Hundertmark), now a successful physician, hoping he can give her a lead on job opportunities. Maggie's big mouth soon turns a cordial conversation into something more confrontational, but she manages to finagle an invitation for herself to a party at Mike's house.

 Maggie is later notified the party has been canceled but thinks Mike has just had second thoughts about inviting her. In the second act, she shows up anyway at Mike's home to find only Mike and his wife, Kate (Nicole Powerll) present with a sick child upstairs. At first, Kate is sympathetic to Maggie's plight, but once again, outspoken Maggie turns things into an increasingly ugly confrontation, making vague references to Mike's Southie past, racism (Kate is African-American), past affairs, and questions about who fathered Maggie's retarded daughter.

Nelson and Hundertmark deliver fine performances in this second act as anger and recrimination flare. Powell is more subdued and at times her soft voice is difficult to hear in the farther corners of the theatre. But this is an excellent play with superb acting all around, a theatre experience that may be hard to top for the rest of this season.