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...