American playwright Lynn Nottage has won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the first black woman to do.so. Intimate Apparel, written in 2003, went on to become one of the most performed plays in America.
Nobody, watching this beautifully acted revival, sensitively directed by Linette Linton, will doubt they are watching a modern American classic.
The play, inspired by a photograph of her great grandmother, is set in New York in 1905. Esther (Samira Wiley), a 35-year-old, single and lonely, is a gifted and successful black seamstress.
She lives in a boarding house for black women run by a formidable yet warm-hearted grande dame of a landlady (Nicola Hughes). She sews exquisite lingerie, corsets and undergarments. Her clients include a brash black prostitute (Faith Omole) and a wealthy white socialite (Claudia Jolly) who is attracted to her.
She is befriended by a white man, a fabric salesman (Alex Waldmann), who is a strict Orthodox Jew. Gentle and kind, he loves her as much as the silk and lace he so fondly and sensuously handles.
Esther dreams of opening a beauty parlour for black women and finding a husband. Out of the blue, a letter arrives from a Caribbean labourer (Kadiff Kirwan) who is working on the Panama Canal. Innocent, illiterate, she finds herself being courted by a man she has never met and falls in love, won over by the tender language of his correspondence.
Nottage’s play, delicate and poetic, is poignant and funny; but never as laughable as some immature members of the audience naively and embarrassingly thought.
Intimate Apparel is something very special and theatre lovers are in for a treat. It is the best play on in London at the moment.
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