Margie Walsh is in her fifties, living paycheck to paycheck, the single mother of a thirty-year-old mentally disabled daughter, Joyce. So when she's fired from her job at the Dollar Store in South Boston for chronic lateness, she faces destitution unless she can quickly find another job. At the suggestion of her pal Jean, she visits an old high school boyfriend, Mikey Dillon, whom she hasn't seen for thirty years, at his practice in the city to try her luck. Mikey has always been "good people." In the intervening years, he has escaped the neighborhood and made it as a doctor with a fertility specialty. Margie uses the emotional blackmail card and secures herself an invitation to this birthday party at his home in Chestnut Hill, where she hopes to network with his friends and colleagues.
When Mikey calls to tell her that the party has been cancelled last minute because his daughter is sick, Margie assumes he's simply trying to brush her off, so decides to gatecrash it. Once there, however, she discovers that he was telling the truth about the party and meets Mikey's African-American wife, Kate. Out of her depth socially, Margie adopts a passive-aggressive stance, implying that Joyce is Mikey's daughter, born prematurely, something he strenuously denies.
Shrewdlly using Margie as an example of "how choices can make or break us, and how the smallest twists of fate can determine our path," David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People convincingly challenges our stereotypes of class and class loyalty and poses real questions. What role does character play in the way our lives turn out? Are we victims of circumstance or do we make our own? What do we owe to those we grew up with and were once close to? By turns funny and wrenchingly poignant, Good People explores the complexity of its themes while evoking a sympathy for its varied cast of characters.