Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
✭✭✭✭✩
by Lynn Nottage, directed by Philip Akin
Obsidian Theatre, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto
January 16-February 3, 2008
Intimate Apparel by African-American playwright Lynn Nottage is a beautifully crafted work that has the richness and texture of a late 19th- or early 20th-century novel. We are lucky to have a company like Obsidian Theatre to give this play from 2003 its Canadian premiere in such a gorgeous, carefully conceived production.
The plot has an arc similar to other classic stories about a spinster finding a love she never expected with a man she doesn’t really know. At one point the action even echoes the famous door-knocking scene in Henry James’s Washington Square (1880). The important difference here is that the protagonist is black. Esther Mills (Raven Dauda), alone in the world, earns a living as a seamstress in New York specializing in the intimate apparel of the title that takes her into the lives of both the wealthy society matrons like Mrs. Van Buren (Carly Street) and downtrodden prostitutes like Mayme (Lisa Berry).
At age 35 she assumes that love has passed her by until George (Kevin Hanchard), a Caribbean worker on the Panama Canal, happens to begin corresponding with her, ending in his proposal of marriage and arrival in New York. Can Esther really love a man she has never met? Can she ignore the growing affection between her and the fabric merchant Mr. Marks (Alex Poch-Goldin)? These romantic questions drive the action along with the more modern question whether Esther can or should sacrifice her independence for love.
The strong cast is led by Dauda in a humorous, heart-breaking, inspiring performance. Her Esther is clearly too prim, too self-contained, someone who has lived alone too long, whose aching for love is real but whose conception of it is not. Street and Berry aptly portray the extremes between which Esther’s life plays out--the first respectable but without sex or love, the second unrespectable with sex but without love. Marium Carvell as Esther’s widowed landlady comes to represent the firm anchor Esther needs. Hanchard and Poch-Goldin are also excellent as opposites--the first materialistic, the second spiritual--but like the rest they are also finely drawn characters, not symbols.
Most memorable are the subtle scenes of the dawning but unspoken love between Esther and Mr. Marks where fabric becomes a metaphor for the emotional wealth they could offer each other. Tamara Marie Kucheran has risen to the challenge of this theme with a series of incredibly beautiful costumes and a handsome, detailed multi-level set. Philip Akin directs the play with the leisurely rhythm of ragtime. Like a good novel this is play to settle into and wrap round yourself. Let’s hope Obsidian will explore more of Nottage’s world.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-01-24.
Photo: Raven Dauda and Alex Poch-Goldin. ©2008
2008-01-24
Intimate Apparel