4 Chairs “Good People” Plays Theater Wit through August 23rd

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“Sharp, Funny, and Uncomfortably Human: Good People Shines at Theater Wit” - Review By: Paul Lisnek

****/4

“Sharp, Funny, and Uncomfortably Human: Good People Shines at Theater Wit”

This production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People from 4 Chairs Theatre at Theater Wit proves that a familiar script can still feel alive when the ensemble and director trust the complexity of our humanity, or lack of it. Relying on a sharp blend of South Boston grit and moral ambiguity, this company delivers a performance that is at times bitterly funny, at moments unexpectedly tender, and, in its best moments, intentionally challenging to our moral sensitivities.

The plot of Good People follows Margaret (Margie) Walsh (played quite convincingly by Jodi Kingsley), a middle aged single mother in South Boston who loses her low wage Dollar Store job and faces eviction in the face of caring for her special needs daughter. Newly unemployed, she reaches out to Mike (well played by Bryan Breau), her old boyfriend who escaped their rough neighborhood to become a successful doctor, hoping he can help her find work. Margie shows up for what turns out to be a cancelled party at Mike’s comfortable suburban home where she meets his wife Kate (perfectly portrayed by Sandra Adjoumani). At that point, the play unspools into a tense, funny, and uneasy reunion that forces all three to confront the role of luck, class, and personal responsibility in how “good” people can end up on such different paths.

Staged in Theater Wit’s intimate space, 4 Chairs leans into intimacy. These characters’ worlds feel lived-in and real. The actors are quite capable carrying the socio‑economic weight of their life’s challenges. The transitions are swift and underscore how quickly Margie’s life keeps narrowing while everyone else’s seems to be sprinting ahead. 

From a Dollar Store outdoor break area to a bingo hall, and ultimately to an upper class Chestnut Hill living room, the class differences are striking almost to the point of culture shock. The ultimate moments occur when Margie shows up at her old boyfriend’s upscale home (where wife Kate initially takes her to be the caterer)—plays front and center, with blocking and moves that constantly redraw the power dynamic in the room. Who exactly should have ended up in this upper middle class lifestyle?

The production necessarily stands or falls on its Margie, who is clearly the engine of the evening. This Margi, Kingsley, is less saintly victim than a woman whose plight is edged with real exhaustion. She tosses off one-liners like second nature, but you can see and feel the calculation behind them: humor as her survival strategy, sarcasm is her armor. When she’s fired in the opening scene, Kingsley lets the beat hang just long enough for us to watch embarrassment turn to anger, and then harden into a kind of resolve that propels her through the rest of the play.

Around her, a Southie chorus is assembled that feels instantly recognizable. Her friends at home and the bingo hall risk being seen as Golden Girls type caricatures, but they successfully sidestep that pitfall as they needle each other with a specificity that illustrates years of shared friendship and a lifetime of shared challenges. Each supporting performance adds a distinct comic rhythm while still grounding the very real stakes facing Margie. As Mike, the “good kid” who escaped the neighborhood and grew into a successful doctor, Breau avoids being seen as the clear villain. His discomfort at seeing Margie again after many years reads as genuine but also as though there’s a secret being hidden; his defensiveness in the second act feels like a man who’s spent years telling himself a particular story about his past and will do anything not to see it rewritten or undone. 

The wild card is Mike’s wife, Kate, whose presence shifts the play from reunion drama into something volatile. Here, Four Chairs finds one of its most satisfying notes: the wife’s initial warmth gradually transitions into suspicion, and ultimately moral outrage. As Margie’s version of the past unfolds, the difference in lifestyles come into high conflict. The penultimate scene where all three share the stage becomes a series of power handoffs, with the actors playing not just what’s said but also playing off what everyone had previously dared to say aloud.

What distinguishes this production is a clear refusal to clean up the play’s ethical knots. The director, the seasoned Lauren Berman who is also at the helm of 4 Chairs, may have been tempted to guide the production into a straightforward indictment of class privilege, but Berman seems more interested in letting the moral dilemma get carried out the door with the audience. 

Who is lying? What are the real underlying intentions? Margie is directed to exhibit her anger but without erasing the plausibility of her manipulations; Berman lets Mike’s guilt register without absolving him. Moments that might have been delivered as speeches instead transform into arguments, messy as they are. But this well suits a play that’s fundamentally about who gets to claim the label “good” and deliberately chooses not to answer the question.

The production resists giving us the satisfaction of a clear verdict. Instead, it leaves us in an uneasy space where luck, hard work, and class barriers collide.

As a whole, 4 Chairs Theatre’s Good People is a tightly directed, actor-driven production that trusts its sophisticated Chicago audience to sit with discomfort of having to deal with the work’s haunting question: if being “good” is partly a matter of circumstance, what happens to the people whose circumstances never cut them a break? Overall, this is a smart revival that will have you thinking and discussing long after you leave Theater Wit’s Stage One.