I’ve mentioned before that I have a thing about accents. If they’re not right, they take me straight out of the play and into the nuances of the vowels. This is particularly important with regional accents. Most British actors can do a good generic North American newsreader accent, and many North American actors can deliver RP. But regional accents are much, much trickier to do at all, and extremely difficult to do well.

Good People, a play set in South Boston, was always going to be a challenge. The Southie accent is a very particular accent. Think Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting (and some Southie residents even criticised that). It takes cues from Ireland but is in no way Irish, is nasal like a Brooklyn accent but with even flatter vowel sounds, and is extremely difficult to reproduce, particularly without sounding like you’re making fun.

Imelda Staunton (Margaret) deserves utmost praise, for not only nailing the accent but doing it so subtly that it was in no way a caricature. She acted the part (of a local woman at the end of her financial rope) beautifully, but it was her verbal prowess that really impressed me. Lloyd Owen (Mike), her high school boyfriend made good, to whom she appeals for help, did a lovely job of beginning the play with a fairly generic East Coast accent, and then allowing the Southie to slip out more and more as he became more and more agitated. The rest of the cast was less successful, although Matthew Barker did a fine job.

I thought the second half was much better than the first, which sets up the action and has some good jokes, but really needs the rapport between the three local women to feel completely natural, which didn’t happen for me. The second half, however, particularly the pivotal scene with Margaret, Mike and his wife, was both hilarious and thought-provoking.

The play is an intelligent one, bringing up issues of privilege, luck, and history. We all know how hard we’ve worked to get where we are, so it is often unpleasant to be reminded that hard work alone is not enough to succeed. The choices we make are important, but all successful people are lucky in some way. Lucky to be born to the right parents, lucky to be smart, lucky to be talented, lucky to have been given the opportunity for an education.

Poverty is a subject that is not explored at the theatre often enough. Staunton delivers a moving speech about how people on the poverty line are often one misstep away from disaster, and that one misstep can lead to a chain of events that have unintended and awful consequences. It was an insight into the short-term thinking of poor people that people with more resources often fail to understand.

A somewhat uneven but fascinating play. Well acted throughout, with a powerful central performance from Imelda Staunton. Closing soon, but recommended.