Good People
Altarena's Masterful Look at Working Class South Boston
By: Victor Cordell - Aug 25, 2025
Many neighborhoods in major cities are noted for their ethnic enclaves and distinctive customs like New York’s Chinatown and Miami’s Little Havana. In the 20th century, the working-class area of South Boston, known as Southie to the locals, became a prime destination for the Irish diaspora. Among its positive distinctions, South Boston activated modern St. Patrick’s Day parades and celebrations. Conversely, in the 1970s, this very white neighborhood became one of the nation’s most notorious resistance points to court-mandated school busing to achieve desegregation. Racial animus participates in this play in two different ways.
Altarena Playhouse’s production of Good People scintillates from beginning to end. Replete with powerful issues about social mores, class, and mobility; racial interactions and prejudice; friendship and loyalty; and responsibility, self-determination, and luck; it jarringly reflects like a social mirror. The ensemble of six actors, led by the captivating Alicia Rydman as Margie, is absolutely exquisite, with every performance a gem.
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire grew up in Southie, so he knows whereof he speaks. And while the action takes place in 2011, the central characters grew up there in the ‘70s when their critical backstories occurred.
Margie (with a hard g), works at a Dollar Store and lives hand to mouth. As a single mother, she has raised a 30-year-old mentally-deficient daughter, Joyce. Despite a sympathetic boss, Stevie (played by Samuel Barksdale), the burden of Joyce’s care leads to Margie’s losing her job. Most of the blame lies with her usually kindly but inconstant landlord, the wisecracking older woman Dottie (Marsha van Broek) who watches Joyce on the cheap when Margie is at work.
Her good friend Jean (Nicole Naffaa) is her greatest supporter and urges Margie to contact Mike (Daron Jennings) to see about a job from him or his contacts. Mike overcame the drag of Southie to become a successful doctor with a home in tony Chestnut Hill, joining what Margie refers to as the “lace curtain” set. Margie and Mike dated for a couple of months critical to the timeline of Joyce’s birth, but Margie has always attributed the paternity to another. Ultimately, Margie will meet Mike’s wife, Kate (Rezan Asfaw), who significantly is black, and brings the most dignity among the characters with an uncommon receptiveness to entertaining and respecting someone from the lower class.
With Lindsay-Abaire’s depictions (scenic design by Tom Curtin) and the adroit direction of Russell Kaltschmidt, the situations and characters in Good People resonate with truth. Though most get by within acceptable social limits, gang fights, petty larceny, jail time, homelessness, and early death abound as topics of discussion in the working-class girls’ talk. The stultifying immobility of the economically marginalized is numbing. The thick Boston brogue (kudos to Dialect Coach Sarah Elizabeth Williams), which Mike has overcome to climb the social ladder, acts as a marker. So does buying from the Dollar Store and Goodwill. And relief from the humdrum is playing Bingo at the church once a week.
But the characters are lively, interesting, and virtuous in their own way. They are all good people. That is, each possesses flawed goodness, which is maybe the most we can expect. Although Margie does manipulate Mike in some ways and becomes mean and confrontational, her forgiving nature and unwillingness to blame anyone for her burdens and losses is so saintly it’s almost annoying. In a counterintuitive appraisal, she rejects the excuse that there is no way out of Southie for most people and says instead that she would feel loss if there had been no way out, even though it’s eluded her. Rydman defines the Southie-rooted Margie with penetrating flair, having an endless vocabulary of facial expressions and gesticulations to match the accent.
While Margie is uninhibited, the guarded Mike has twisted narratives of his past to fit the image he has projected to Kate and the social circle that he graduated to. Kate has never met anyone from his juvenile years. But when Margie re-enters his life, she has credible memories at variance with Mike’s. This includes a life-defining incident that could have ended differently with a profound effect on his future. How will these differences resolve? One of the many strengths of this compelling play is the unpredictability of its endless revelations.
Good People written by David Lindsay-Abaire is produced by Altarena Playhouse and plays on its stage at 1409 High Street, Alameda, CA through September 21, 2025.