#50: “Good People” by David Lindsay-Abaire
I love a good hometown hero. Especially of the playwright variety. Sam Shepherd is my hometown hero; those coyotes he described in the stage directions of “True West” were practically in my backyard growing up. David Lindsay-Abaire is my adopted-home hero. A Boston boy. Or, as he says in this play “a mouthie from Southie.”
I felt like I knew these characters. That’s always a sign of good playwriting for me. I don’t know anyone like these people and yet I feel like I’ve known them all my life. I’ll even forgive Lindsay-Abaire’s cheap trick — at a crucial moment in the play he has a character block themselves, dissolving all stakes and losing momentum of the plot — because he’s just so great at writing sharp dialogue.
