In David Harrower’s intense 2007 drama “Blackbird,” Alison Pill played a grown woman seeking out the man (Jeff Daniels) she slept with back when she was 12 to his 40.
The past also catches up to the present in Harrower’s similarly sparse “Good With People,” but this time the impact is muffled.
The play, a Scottish production presented as part of the Brits Off Broadway series, starts with a young lad, Evan Bold (Andrew Scott-Ramsay), checking into a seaside hotel.
Or rather he tries to: The reception-desk clerk, Helen Hughes (Blythe Duff), delays him by following every single rule to the letter — his room is ready but it’s too early to go in, he can’t take his beer upstairs, and so on.
We soon learn that Evan, who is visiting for a wedding, had bullied Helen’s son more than a decade ago. As the two engage in conversation, we realize Evan himself had a tough time in their small town, because he lived on the mistrusted nuclear base.
Duff — familiar to viewers of “Taggart” as stalwart Detective Jackie Reid — has a cautious gruffness as Helen. She almost succeeds in grounding this poetic, elliptical show, staged on a set that’s bare except for a chair.
The big problem is that it’s never clear why Helen and Evan should be chatting at all. They seem to interact only because it’s convenient for the playwright. But if there’s little reason for them to talk, there’s less reason still for us to listen.