Intimate Apparel
A Play by Lynn Nottage
The Lyric Stage Company of Boston
Directed by Summer L. Williams. Other credits: Anne Sherer (set design), Amanda Mujica (costume design), Chris Judacs (lighting design), Kelsey Jarboe (sound design), Stephanie LeBolt (assistant director), and Bryn Austin (dialect coach).
Running time 2 hours, 15 minutes with one intermission
February 13- March 14, 2015
Just because all the pieces of the play Intimate Apparel look terrific, it doesn’t mean they fit perfectly. But this is a lovely play, actually a series of vignettes deconstructing the life of Esther (Lindsey McWhorter), an African American seamstress with uncanny ability to match fabric and craftsmanship to the lingerie needs of her clientele. The range of her Manhattan clients allows playwright Lynn Nottage to explore themes of race, sexuality, loyalty, self worth, and social status.
Nottage’s attempt to marry all the themes taxes credibility but the individual pieces are achingly touching. Esther, at 35, is high on talent, humility, and core values and low on self-esteem and, according to her own assessment, plain and unattractive. Living in an all female boarding house, she foresees a life as a spinster.
When a letter from a laborer digging the Panama Canal arrives, Esther, who can’t read, depends on other characters to read it to her. This device connects her with her white Fifth Avenue client Mrs. Van Buren (Amanda Ruggiero), her red light district client Mayme (Kris Sidberry), and Mrs. Singleton (Cheryl Singleton), both African American, who each bring their class’s perspective to Esther’s situation.
Esther’s shopping forays take her to fabric merchant Mr. Marks, an unmarried orthodox Romanian Jew. The scenes between these two characters, marginal in social class and status, take on dual meanings as lonely Mr. Marks delicately strokes the rich textures of the silks he saves for her, his only customer with equal appreciation for the fine materials. One of the most breathtakingly tender scenes in the play takes place during one such meeting.
Esther agrees to marry George, the Barbadian laborer, sight unseen, who, we are not surprised to learn, is not the thoughtful, romantic man she expected him to be.
The triangle that develops between Esther and Mayme and George is telegraphed early on but crushes Esther and depletes her of savings and her dream of opening her own beauty shop.
“Don’t give a man a piece of your heart unless he gives you a piece of his,” Esther’s land lady, the sage widow Mrs. Singleton, tells her. Naïve Esther ignores the signs and pays the price.
The scenes between Esther and Mrs. Van Buren underline the gulf between the black and white societies of the early 1900s (and, we wonder, of contemporary society).
The Lyric Stage Company consistently makes the most of its performance space. The production values - set, costumes, lighting, music - were thought out imaginatively and cleverly delivered by Director Summer L. Williams.
No matter that the story is stitched together in a bit of a patchwork, the ensemble makes for a moving night at the theater.
Photo by Glenn Perry for the Lyric Stage Company
Nice review. If I weren't otherwise engaged I'd see it tonight.
Posted by: Ann Baker | March 14, 2015 at 01:44 PM