THE LOWDOWN
Intimate ApparelTuesday to Sunday, through Sept. 24
Intiman Theatre
Tickets
$10-$46
269-1900
"Intimate "Intimate Apparel," now playing at Intiman Theatre, unfolds like a beautiful bolt of cloth, shimmering with every movement.
Lynn Nottage's poignant play, inspired by her own great-grandmother, who made intimate apparel for wealthy New York women, is set in 1905 Manhattan and peers into the lives of an African-American seamstress and the women around her.
Director Jacqueline Moscou, who steered another Nottage drama, "Crumbs From the Table of Joy," a few years ago at Intiman, has fashioned a touching production. Moscou directs a talented cast, treating the poetic script with great sensitivity as she mixes heart and humanity with touches of humor.
As written, Nottage's characters resemble fabrics. Some are strong and durable, some wrinkle under pressure, while others are delicate and must be treated as such, lest they tear and cannot be mended.
Gwendolyn Mulamba gives a compelling, emotionally diverse performance as the determined and despairing Esther. Unwed and virginal at age 35, she has turned her talent for sewing into a lucrative business, supporting herself by stitching "intimate apparel" for wealthy uptown socialites and downtown ladies of the night. Unlike the lush and lovely lingerie she creates, Esther leads a lonely existence, repressing her dreams of romance, because she believes that no man could want a plain, illiterate woman like her.
Esther's social life is limited to her landlady, clients and the Jewish draper from whom she buys her fabric. So when George Armstrong, a Panama Canal worker claiming to know her church deacon, starts sending her lyrical love letters, she longs to respond. But since she cannot read or write, two of her clients vicariously offer to pen her missives.
Over time, she falls in love with this man she's never seen. But when Esther's faraway lover finally arrives in New York and marries her, her romantic infatuation starts to unravel in a thousand tiny stitches of truth.
The women in "Intimate Apparel" become sections on the quilt of Esther's life. Truth be known, all of them want the same thing: intimacy with love. But they've had to settle for less.
Mari Nelson portrays Mrs. Van Buren, a well-heeled, young Fifth Avenue wife who's starved for affection. Like a bird in a gilded cage, the unhappy white socialite is desperate to touch and be touched. With a bittersweet vulnerability, Nelson preens and prances through her role, more comfortable confiding her most intimate feelings to a humble seamstress than to her absentee husband and high-society friends.
As the bawdy, gin-loving Mayme, an audaciously exuberant Yvette Ganier pounds out Joplinesque rags on a worn-out upright piano and shares details of her sex life with a reluctant-to-listen Esther. Before she changed her name from biblical Judith to secular Mayme, she harbored dreams of being a concert pianist. Now she survives by singing in cheap saloons and turning one-dollar tricks in New York's Tenderloin District.
A decisive Demene E. Hall provides comedy relief in her turn as the strong-willed, busybody landlady, Mrs. Dickson. A shameless matchmaker and gossip, she blatantly opens Esther's mail without permission, then delivers her opinions with entitlement. After all, she married "up" to an older man whose opium habit she endured. Instead of love, she settled for a boardinghouse.
Under a single beam of light, Esther's long-distance beau George recites his letters as monologues. And from the moment actor Albert Jones stands on the upper-level veranda of the set, his gleaming torso proclaims George's restless sensuality.
But it is the scenes between the Jewish cloth merchant Mr. Marks and Esther that provide the most erotic and exquisite moments of the production. Marc Jablon gives a touching and tender performance as the Orchard Street draper who sees Esther's true loveliness, reflected symbolically in the beautiful materials he shows to her. Corseted by convention, they dare not express their true feelings; which simmer unspoken just below the surface. Instead of each other, they take turns holding and touching the fabric.
In front of a giant dress pattern projected on the back wall of the theater, a lone sewing machine reigns over the beautiful wood flooring of the apron stage, while a curved-railing veranda hovers above. Designer Carey Wong divides the lower level of the stage into four mini-sets that slide in and out of place as the scene switches back and forth among Mr. Marks' fabric shop, Mrs. Van Buren's mansion, Mayme's brothel boudoir and Esther's boardinghouse room. And Deb Trout's seductive designs for the beaded and lace-trimmed vintage lingerie could spark a serious case of corset-envy in Madonna and Victoria's Secret devotees.
Nottage deals with burgeoning feminist issues decades before they ignited the historical movement. Her play is peppered with daunting personal testimonies of feminine resilience. Mrs. Dickson's mother, a washerwoman whose wounded hands bled through the gloves she wore, wanted better for her daughter. Mrs. Van Buren married a wealthy man who makes her feel worthless because she cannot get pregnant. The daughter of a southern slave, Esther made her way north state-by-state by picking berries. And when she reached New York City, ate breadcrumbs meant for pigeons and slept on the cold floor of a church until she could afford to rent a room.
Nottage touches on racial issues with understated power. Esther, Mrs. Dickson and Mayme carry the burden of being both black and female. Although George longs for respect and dignity, ultimately he lacks the strength of character to persevere in a white man's world.
But in "Intimate Apparel," yearning transcends pigmentation with heart-wrenching emotion. For what we hold inside can be far more beautiful than what we show to the world.
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