Before she became the first (and, so far, only) woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, for her grittier plays “Ruined” (2009) and “Sweat” (2015), Lynn Nottage had one of her first successes with 2003′s lyrical “Intimate Apparel.” The heroine of the piece is a lonely Black seamstress in 1905 Manhattan, whose race and gender in that time and place are the cause of considerable heartache, of dashed hopes and dreams as she struggles to satisfy the most basic of human needs.
Delicately directed for Actor’s Express by Ibi Owolabi (late of Synchronicity’s “The Bluest Eye”), the drama tells the sensitive story of Esther, a woman whose life feels anonymous — or “unidentified,” as the captions read in projected snapshot photos that end each of the play’s two acts. Often dismissively referring to herself as a “featherless bird” or “another piece of furniture,” Esther has resigned herself to being forever “unattached,” until she finds a promising pen pal and begins an unlikely correspondence with George, an apparently cultivated Panama Canal worker from Barbados.
Prior to the two of them inevitably meeting in person, at which point the drama succumbs to a few too many predictable contrivances in its plot development, the Express’ “Intimate Apparel” is at its most emotionally honest and beautifully drawn in depicting the relationships between Esther (Vallea E. Woodbury) and some of Nottage’s other supporting characters.
She’s a longtime boarder at a rooming house operated by the maternal Mrs. Dickson (a grand Terry Henry), who’s prone to offering unsolicited advice about romance and marriage. “You can tell more about a man by where he shops for his clothes than by all of his practiced conversation and sugared words,” she intones, complimenting the good penmanship of George’s letters even as she casts doubt on their “familiar tone.”
While Esther scrimps and saves to raise enough money to someday open a “quaint beauty parlor for colored women,” she makes lingerie for a diverse clientele that ranges from a pampered upper-class society maven, Mrs. Van Buren (Candi VandiZandi), to a free-spirited piano-playing prostitute, Mayme (Valeka Jessica).
Credit: Courtesy of Casey Gardner Ford
Credit: Courtesy of Casey Gardner Ford
Esther’s budding friendship with young Mr. Marks (a fine Ross Benjamin), a reserved Jewish fabric merchant, is tinged with poignant regret; in a later day and age, they could have been destined for one another. Just as surely, her eventual marriage to George (Marcus Hopkins-Turner) is doomed to disappoint, insofar as it’s built on mutually false pretenses; he doesn’t realize that she can’t actually read, and she has no idea that he didn’t actually write those love letters himself.
Woodbury leaves a genuinely sweet and sympathetic impression in a highly challenging role — but in occasional scenes she is understated to the point of delivering certain lines of her dialogue nearly inaudibly, and in others she isn’t underplaying so much as she comes across as merely oblivious. Once George begins hitting her up for money, she hands it all over to him too willingly. After she discovers what happens to the wedding gift she made for him, it scarcely fazes her with sufficient anger or pain or conflict. That Esther might end up right back where she started ought to cut more deeply.
Director Owolabi’s Express production is very generously rendered by her design team, including the handsome, compact set by Jennifer Rose Ivey, the evocative lighting of Toni Sterling, and Kendra Johnson’s nicely appointed period costumes. In the end, the show seems to be lovelier to look at than it is to always appreciate as a fully absorbing personal drama about a woman at once ahead of her time and yet sadly powerless to escape it.
THEATER REVIEW
“Intimate Apparel”
Through April 17. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. $36-$38 ($20 for students). Actor’s Express (at King Plow Arts Center), 887 W. Marietta St. NW, Atlanta. 404-607-7469. www.actors-express.com.
Bottom line: Heartfelt.
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