"The Good Ones"
Planet Ant Theatre
Hamtramck, Mich.
Sept. 20, 2025
Loss and unrequited love are painful enough on their own. Put them together and you have the basis for Dani Poppe’s “The Good Ones,” which premiered this month at Planet Ant Theatre. The play examines the feelings associated with losing a loved one, which in the show are further complicated by romantic tension between close friends.
The show’s two characters are young adults Anna (Liv Paryaski) and Lucas (Jack Horrigan) who are – or were – best friends. Modern day Lucas opens the play speaking to the audience about his new book “The Good Ones,” a memoir about Anna, “a book waiting to be written.” It is apparent the friendship is in the past tense, and the rest of the play unfolds to explain why. Scenes from the last days of their friendship are spliced with monologues from modern day Lucas as he processes what went wrong.
When we meet Anna, she is tossing out clothes from her closet – clothes she had borrowed from her sister, who had recently died. She is sad, angry and lost, and Lucas is there to support and console, helping her to fold the clothes before convincing her to join him for a milkshake. At the diner, we learn that Anna and her sister had planned to take a trip to Chicago, which was perfectly planned by her sister on a – now-cherished – handwritten note, showing her all her favorite places from when she used to live there. Lucas encourages her to take the trip for a sense of closure, offering to drive her there himself, which she begrudgingly agrees to.
The journey from Portland isn’t easy, often complicated by alcohol. On one particularly boozy evening, Anna tells Lucas that he “feels like sunshine,” and he bashfully admits the same. They refer to each other as being one of “the good ones.” She then insists he slow dance with her outside. When Lucas leans in to kiss her, all hell breaks loose. She accuses Lucas of taking advantage of her in her grief and sends him away. When she wakes up alone the next morning – and realizes that both he and the list are gone – she gets upset. After having found the list in the car, Lucas returns. They mend their friendship, have an amazing few days together to Chicago and return home – and never see each other again.
As Lucas finishes his reading, he wonders if Anna will find his book – and him – lighting and leaving a symbolic candle. Behind him, Anna reads the book on a park bench, then swiftly gets up and tosses it in the trash tellingly located next to the candle.
In her director’s note, Poppe said she wrote the play while grieving the tragic and sudden loss of her sister and niece, made worse by the invasive inquiries of those around her about how it happened. She also noted that important parts of Anna’s grieving process aren’t there, because her voice was stolen by someone exploiting her story for fame and money. I assume this is an extreme representation of the people in Poppe’s own life who had sought the details of her sister and niece’s deaths at her emotional expense and privacy.
Without the director’s note, my takeaway from the play was a representation of the mixed feelings experienced while grieving, compounded by the sometimes complicated dynamics of an opposite sex friendship between two heterosexual people. Poppe said she wanted to accurately portray a “good and relatable” female character. As a woman myself, I felt sympathy for Lucas in addition to Anna. He genuinely came across as wanting to be there for Anna as a friend. I can’t blame him for thinking there was something romantic between them following Anna’s affectionate remarks and insistence on a slow dance – especially fueled by alcohol. This was also the first time Lucas seemed to push anything other than friendship, and he swiftly stopped and returned later to finish the trip as friends only.
If his goal was to take advantage of Anna during her grief, it would be more believable if he had been the one pushing the alcohol or insisting on a slow dance, perhaps preceded by a subtle build-up of low-key advances throughout the trip. He also wouldn’t have returned.
Regarding his memoir about Anna, I understood that as more about someone processing a potential love lost – another expression of grief – with the hope his book may reunite them, as opposed to exploiting someone else’s pain. We never learn the details of Anna’s loss, and Lucas’ monologues focus on their final days together, not what happened in the tragedy (assuming he knows – we never see him ask).
If the point was to present Lucas as performing as a “good one” while exploiting her pain, it may have been more effective to have him ask her about the tragedy several times before she begrudgingly concedes. If those private details then make it into his book without consent, it would be a stronger case for him actually being a “bad” one.
Both actors were solid in their character portrayals. Paryaski carried the weight of her loss consistently throughout the performance, spliced with snippets of laughter, guilt, loneliness and anger that accurately portrayed the complicated feelings associated with grief. Horrigan alternated seamlessly among a somber author, thoughtful friend and relaxed drinking buddy, and the comfortable chemistry and dialogue between them was natural.
The set design was simple but effective. Four cubes were smoothly reconfigured throughout the performance to become makeshift beds, dining tables and the car, in front of a painted backdrop of the Chicago skyline made of books, which I particularly liked. A TV off to the side displayed live images of the settings to add more realness to the scenes and played a video montage of the actors having fun sightseeing in Chicago, which added a fun and authentic touch.
There is a lot of potential with “The Good Ones.” While I did not understand it as a story about the exploitation of grief, it is a worthy exploration and reflection of the grieving process and the coexistence of love and pain. Most of us have felt these emotions in some capacity, and “The Good Ones” is a relatable story that may bring comfort and catharsis to those feeling them now.
