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written by Lynn Nottage, directed by Philip Akin

Obsidian Theatre, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

Feb 11-March 6, 2010

The Canadian Stage Company has done Toronto a favour by presenting Obsidian Theatre's 2008 production of Intimate Apparel.  The play by African-American playwright Lynn Nottage is as richly textured and as beautifully crafted as the hand-made embroidered corsets that the title refers to.  Obsidian has luckily re-assembled the entire cast and creative team of the original production including Philip Akin, whose direction moves with the steady, leisurely rhythm of ragtime.  The move from the original venue, the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, to the much larger Bluma Appel Theatre has only benefited the play and given it more room to breathe.  

The plot about a spinster finding a love she never expected with a man she doesn’t really know may seem familiar but Nottage makes it new by taking the story beyond its expected climax.  In 1905 Esther Mills (Raven Dauda), a black woman from the South now alone in the world, earns a living as a seamstress in New York specializing in fine intimate apparel that takes her into the lives of both wealthy Fifth Avenue socialites like Mrs. Van Buren (Carly Street) and Tenderloin prostitutes like Mayme (Lisa Berry).  At age 35 Esther assumes that love has passed her by until George (Kevin Hanchard), a Caribbean worker on the Panama Canal, begins corresponding with her.  This ends 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 Jewish fabric merchant Mr. Marks (Alex Poch-Goldin)?  The story becomes universal because Nottage presents us with six characters who dare to hope for happiness despite the perceived boundaries of gender, race, religion and class that restrict their freedom.

The acting was uniformly excellent before, but now it has a natural, lived-in feeling that enhances every scene.  Dauda recreates her humorous, heart-breaking, inspiring performance as a good woman, perhaps too prim, too self-contained, whose aching for love is real but whose conception of it is not.  Street and Berry aptly portray the extremes of unhappy respectability and devil-may-care disrepute between which Esther’s life plays out.  Marium Carvell as Esther’s widowed landlady is the firm anchor Esther needs.  Hanchard and Poch-Goldin are also outstanding as opposites--the first materialistic, the second spiritual.  The play’s imagery equates fabric with love and beauty, and Tamara Marie Kucheran embraces this challenge with a series of gorgeous costumes and a handsome, detailed multi-level set.  This is a wonderful, deeply felt production that no one should miss.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-02-17.

Photo: Lisa Berry and Raven Dauda. ©David Hou.