Good People review – "Where the f--- did all the good people go?"

Written by: Nathan Copeland
Edited for FalWriting by: Eoin Murray

Georgia Death’s debut one-woman play is satirically bleak and Teya Nicole Hide’s delectable performance of a woman deluded by her own tormented grief is the match made in heaven.

“And I feel like an animal being led to slaughter, and I regret every single bacon sandwich that I have eaten in my life” confesses the protagonist of Georgia Death’s Good People, in a raw and brutally (dis)honest depiction of grief, guilt, addiction, trauma, family resentment, and a whole load of wine.

Good People is a delightfully frantic and numbing one-woman show to be consumed in the evening. It’s a cheeky glass (or bottle) of wine. The bar of chocolate in the fridge you’ve been waiting to devour all week. You’ve been thinking about it all week and you can’t shake the grip it has on you. 

“Miserly: Being unwilling or showing unwillingness to share with others. Synonyms including close-fisted, tight-fisted, stingy, mingy, scrooge-like, cheap, greedy, masochistic… mean” she declares, out of her trusty dictionary that she uses to ground herself in her wine–infused spiral. See also: delusion, shame, isolation, addiction.

There’s something not quite right with Martha. In an hour-long monologue breaching the boundaries between outrageous and satirically macabre, perhaps it’s the hard drinking, or perhaps it’s all the death that surrounds her. Or, perhaps it’s how frazzled and numb she feels that makes a perfect concoction for the making of a modern-day reincarnation of A Streetcar Named Desire’s Blanche DuBois. 

It all starts, though, with a table. Cluttered with plenty of cigarettes and wine, a newspaper, dictionary, rotary phone, packet of digestives, it makes for what feels like the inside of Martha’s own frazzled, messy mind. The one-woman show takes place in what feels like somewhere disconnected from reality. Disconnected from time itself, even. It sits within its own liminal space in a temporality that blurs the boundaries of what is truth and fabrication. Real and unreal. Said and unsaid. Each scene ebbs and flows into the next like a drunken escapade, and Martha’s witty, cynical, and deliciously narcissistic commentary makes the gut-wrenching moments so much more gut-punching. 

Good People is a tragedy disguised in narcissism by an unreliable yet lovable narrator. It borders neurotic dreamlike vignettes with harsh, blistering reality. Combine that with Martha’s flirtatious banter and misanthropic commentary to the audience, and you have a lethal amalgamation that gives you a slap-in-the-face, wake up call of an ending that leaves you ravenous for more. 

It is no surprise that Good People sold out in under 12 hours. After the debut performances on the 5th and 6th of December, Death and Hide are hoping to take on Cornwall and Fringe festivals in 2024. You can help make this happen via GoFundMe. 

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