Britons tend to think that Americans hardly ever write about class, that to them it is not such a pervasive issue. Not as it is to us, certainly, but in many cases we simply don’t recognise the codes. Neighbourhood is a good one: it may say as much to an American that David Lindsay-Abaire’s play is set in South Boston (working-class, often rough and prideful) as it would to a Briton that it now receives its UK première at the Hampstead Theatre (Hampstead: prosperous, often complacent and, well, smooth). Add in money – protagonist Margaret has just been fired from her job at the checkout of the dollar store – and ethnicity – in search of work she visits old flame Mike, who has made good from the old South Boston Irish cradle and whose wife, almost but not entirely coincidentally, is black – and this is, in effect, a play about waddling, swimming and quacking but which never needs to use the word “duck”.
    
The title itself is partly code: Margaret refers to Mike as being “good people” in the sense that carries connotations of working-class solidarity. But it also interrogates whether either of them deserves their own self-evaluation, he because of his resistance to her importunings despite the possibility that he may be the father of her handicapped daughter, she for deploying so many passive-aggressive stratagems. (Watching the play will be a chastening experience for anyone with such tendencies.) The first half is by and large a prolonged set-up for the sustained scene after the interval between Margaret, Mike and his wife Kate. Lindsay-Abaire and director Jonathan Kent ratchet matters up skilfully, almost imperceptibly so that we never notice the gears changing, only that matters are now more intense than a while ago.
    
In this their principal asset is Imelda Staunton as Margaret, who has been coming over as mouthy and avoid-y from the word go (in fact, so rapidly does she begin that she even pre-empts that word) but is also masterly at playing beats and pauses. She may still be speaking in the same tone, but Staunton conveys that Margaret is now a little bit more deflated, or a little bit more desperate and prepared to risk a dangerous gambit. Lloyd Owen is a firm foil to her as Mike, but this is Staunton’s show from beginning to end. A class act in every sense.
    
Written for the Financial Times.