Good People
Saturday 5th April 2014
Imelda Staunton is a magnificent actress. She’s probably
most recognisable for playing the grotesque Professor Umbridge in the Harry
Potter movies, but good though she is in this part, her career is far richer
than that. You might also have seen her as the shrill Mrs Palmer in Sense and Sensibility (1995) or as the
anxious Mrs Micawber in David Copperfield
(1999), or perhaps in her Oscar-nominated role as the backstreet abortionist in
Vera Drake (2004). On stage, her career
has been equally diverse ranging from Uncle
Vanya to Sweeney Todd, for which
she won her second Olivier award last year. Even in her smallest roles, she
brings such depth and realism to the character. For me, one of her most
powerful performances is her cameo at the start of Mike Leigh’s Another Year (2010), where she plays Janet,
a severely depressed middle-aged woman, scarcely responsive to the probing
questions of her counsellor. In barely a few minutes of film, Miss Staunton creates
a touchingly-recognisable character, convincing us that her bleak existence
continues outside the frame.
Quite a few years ago, when studying at Magdalen, I was
lucky enough to go to a talk by Imelda Staunton at the Oxford Union. She was
engaging, self-deprecating, and very funny. She struck me as a
highly-conscientious actor with a tremendous interest in her craft, committed
to continuous improvement. I plucked up courage to ask her a question and was rewarded
with an insight into the differences between acting on stage, television, and
big screen. In a cinematic close-up, Miss Staunton warned, an actor can only
think his or her emotions, as even a flicker of the face can become a six-foot
twitch! If only everyone in Hollywood heeded
such advice!
Needless to say, after a long acquaintance with her films, I
have long wanted to see Imelda Staunton on stage. A few months ago, I was
typing away at my computer, when my friend, Simon (known to bloggers as stuck in a book) posted a link on my facebook
wall to a new play with her as its lead, being shown at Hampstead Theatre. The
link was accompanied with the words, ‘Shall we get tickets to this?’ Ten
minutes later, said tickets were bought!
I am rather ashamed to admit that I had no idea what the
play, Good People, was about before
last night. My Saturday evening plans were described to all entirely in terms
of: ‘I am going to see Imelda Staunton.’ Yet, in the event, both the play and
said actress were an absolute delight.
Good People was
written by David Lindsay-Abaire and premiered in New York in 2011 with Frances
McDormand in the lead role. It tells the story of Margie Walsh, a middle-aged
woman living in Southie, a working-class neighbourhood of Boston. At the start
of the play, Margie is dismissed from her job on the cash register at the
dollar-store. A single-mother with a severely-disabled adult daughter to
support and a landlady, Dottie, demanding the rent, she is desperate to find
other employment. Her friend, Jean, encourages her to approach an old
boyfriend, Mike, to ask for his help in finding work. Mike is a Southie boy ‘made
good’ – he was ‘smart’, left the neighbourhood to study at U.Penn., and became
a doctor. He’s now ‘comfortably’ off, living in the well-to-do Chestnut Hill
with his wife and daughter. In Margie’s words, he’s become a ‘lace-curtain.’ As
Margie and Mike’s worlds overlap once more, the play explores class and race,
love, hope, and betrayal.
Imelda Staunton is breathtaking as Margie. Her entrance in
the very first scene is spectacular. Margie is chattering nineteen to the
dozen, trying valiantly to persuade her manager, Stevie, to keep her on by
reminding him of her friendship with his late mother. From the first, we are
presented with a woman working herself to the bone in a valiant attempt to hold
it all together. Yet, Margie is no depressive. She’s wise-cracking, sociable,
and determined, refusing to yield to self-pity. The play itself, and Staunton’s
performance, is wonderfully poised between laughter and tears. There’s a powerful
moment in the midst of a scene at the bingo hall between Jean, Margie, Dottie (sometime
friend, sometime landlady when money’s in question) and Stevie. The back and
forth banter between the three women is electric as they trade gossip, insults,
and advice. Jean suggests to Margie that she might find herself a rich husband
at Mike’s birthday party, to which she has wangled an invitation. Margie starts
to ridicule this, staging a mock conversation between herself and an eligible
bachelor:
“Oh, you’re single and
rich. How lovely, because I’m up to my tits in credit-card debt.”
She continues in this vein to Jean’s amusement. Yet, despite
the humour, her desperation comes bubbling to the service:
“And did I mention that I come with an adult daughter! Not
only is she severely retarded, but she still occasionally pisses the bed...”
Staunton’s voice cracks at the last and for a brief and
heartbreaking moment, Margie is overcome. It’s a touching insight, not only
into her inner pain, but also into the day-to-day reality of caring for her
daughter, Joyce, whom we never see on stage but who is ever-present.
Two central themes running through the play are pride and
luck. In Act II, Margie goes to Mike’s house in Chesnut Hill. Although he has
told her that the party is cancelled, she believes he is merely putting her
off, ashamed to be connected to one of his old friends from Southie. There is
no party, and the ensuing encounter between Margie, Mike, and his wife, Kate,
is explosive as long-buried resentments, insecurities, and memories are
reawakened.
Mike is proud of himself, and understandably so. He has left
behind the poverty of his youth and now takes his place in middle-class,
affluent suburbia. He has a beautiful wife, a beautiful daughter, a beautiful
house. He may not be entirely happy himself – we know he is unfaithful in his marriage
– but, in the eyes of the world, he is undoubtedly ‘a success.’ Lloyd Owen plays
him very convincingly. He’s not very likeable, but at the same time, he’s no cartoon
villain – his pretensions, his omissions, his mistakes are all too
recognisable.
Margie is bent on hurting Mike’s pride. She tries to
disabuse him of the notion that he alone is responsible for his success; to
knock out of him the complacent view that anyone else in Southie could have
achieved just as much if they had simply ‘applied themselves.’ He has
constructed a history for himself. He’s not simply the clever underprivileged boy,
isolated amongst his contemporaries in the poor neighbourhood, who has dragged
himself up. Margie reminds him that he was no victim. He may have been poor,
but at least he had a father, and a father who worked hard and looked out for
him. He was part of a gang who beat up kids from the black neighbourhood. He
could have killed a boy, but was saved from doing so by his father’s
intervention. He was lucky.
Margie herself has never had any luck. She’s always held
onto the hope of having a different life, however: what could have been. Perhaps
this is why she and her friends in Southie continue to go and play bingo? They
like the chance that things could be different; that their life could be
changed. It comforts Margie to think that if she hadn’t broken up with Mike and
let him go to U.Penn., she might have lived a different life. When he tells
her, that he would never have stayed with her, she’s deeply hurt. If there was
no chance at all – no opportunity of changed luck – there is no hope. Through
this, Lindsay-Abaire makes a powerful comment on the so-called ‘American Dream’
and the notion that the poor are wholly responsible for their plight. Can
everyone really better themselves? Are some condemned to a life of poverty no
matter how hard they try?
Margie is also proud. Without giving too much away for those
who haven’t seen the play, her decision about the best way to care for her
daughter was governed by pride. She will not beg. For Kate, who has sacrificed
her own happiness with a cheating husband, for the happiness of her own
daughter, this seems difficult to understand. In truth, however, both women
have chosen to make different sacrifices, and both can be understood.
At the end of the play, there is no resolution. Margie is
still looking for work. Yet, in spite of the encounter with Mike, hope has been
restored. Margie, Jean, Stevie and Dottie are all back at the bingo hall.
Stevie promises to ask his brother to help. ‘Something will turn up,’ says Jean
reassuringly. The number called is G53 - the number that a few nights’ ago
would have won Margie the jackpot. This time: nothing. Staunton stares
desperately forwards. Still hoping. With this bittersweet irony, Lindsay-Abaire
leaves us with little hope for a change in her luck.
If Imelda Staunton was outstanding, so too were the
supporting cast. Lorraine Ashbourne was excellent at the sharp and sassy Jean,
so too was June Watson as Dottie. Her ‘arts and crafts’ bunny rabbits, lovingly
glued together in the hope of earning some additional cash, were both hilarious
and tragic. The moment where Mike shatters one of these ghastly creatures against
a wall to Margie’s anguish cry, ‘I paid for that’, was deeply poignant and
sticks in the memory. Angel Coulby, familiar to younger audiences as Queen
Guinevere in the BBC series, Merlin,
was also a touchingly brittle, Kate.
Yesterday, it was the last night of Good People at Hampstead. Simon and I were very privileged to have
tickets – indeed, the chap serving tea at the bar told me so! There was a long
queue for returns. Unlike Margie, you are lucky, however! You still have a
chance to see the show! Good People
is transferring on Thursday to the Noel
Coward Theatre in the West End. The Hampstead run was sold out, so be quick
and buy tickets! You won’t regret it.
In postscript, as many of my friends will know, in spite of being
absolutely terrified of ‘celebrities’, I do like to hang out at the stage door!
In Hampstead, the cast spilled out into the cafe. Simon and I hung around
shiftily for a few minutes, trying to look nonchalant. My eye spied a cluster
of people around a table. Someone looked mightily familiar.
‘Simon,’ I said, trying my best to sound casual. ‘That man
looks awfully like Jim Carter!’
And there he was, Mr Imelda Staunton, the actor, Jim Carton.
Oh come on, I am a Downton nutter... What I should say, is... And there he was,
Mr Carson!!!
If butler-spotting wasn’t exciting enough, we plucked up
enough courage to follow some other fans in approaching Miss Staunton and
congratulating her on the play. She was absolutely lovely, thanked us for
attending (!), and signed autographs. We walked back to the tube in a state of
ridiculous giddiness. Apologies to all on the Oxford tube, who were made aware
that we’d met Imelda, whether they wanted to know or not!
A wonderful actress, a wonderful play, a wonderful night...
