Theatre review: Intimate Apparel

The ongoing collaboration between playwright Lynn Nottage and director Lynette Linton at the Donald and Margot Warehouse continues into a third artistic director's tenure, this time with a historical piece that trades overt anger for something simmering under a quiet heartbreak. Intimate Apparel takes place in 1905 New York where, however formidable and accomplished she might be on her own terms, a woman who's reached a certain age without getting married will still be in what seems like a hopeless situation. So Esther (Samira Wiley,) a seamstress who specialises in fashionably scandalous corsets, has sought-after skills and has spent the last eighteen years saving up the cash to open her own beauty parlour. But while dozens of single girls have passed through Mrs Dickson's (Nicola Hughes) boarding house in that time and left married, at 35 Esther remains single.

So when she receives a letter from a stranger (it's not quite clear how this pen-pal relationship began) it seems like her last chance: George (Kadiff Kirwan) is a Barbadian working on the building of the Panama Canal, and the personality that comes through his letters seems to match well with hers.

But Esther is illiterate, and needs her clients, Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly,) an unhappily married socialite, and Mayme (Faith Omole,) a piano-playing prostitute, to help her read and write her correspondence. Nottage's play is a slow burn but once it kicks in it really draws you in. This is especially true when we see Esther - contemplating marriage with a total stranger whose skin colour and background make him a "suitable" match regardless - have a genuine romantic spark with someone who any number of social rules and taboos deem inappropriate.

Mr Marks (Alex Waldmann) is a white, Jewish Romanian who runs a fabric shop, and Esther is his favourite customer. At first she seems barely to register the extent to which he flirts with her, but gradually acknowledges the fact that the attraction is mutual. He too has a fiancée he’s never met – in this case an arranged marriage in Romania – and some of the most powerful moments in Linton’s production come when the two, who can’t touch because of Marks’ religious beliefs, dance around the physical barrier, expressing their feelings through touching the same piece of fabric (Movement Direction by Shelley Maxwell.)

One thing I also really liked about Nottage’s story structure is the way it wrongfoots the audience: Once Esther and George are married and we discover, with him, that her entire savings are sewn into her quilt, it seems entirely obvious where the story has to go. But while we don’t get a fairytale ending for her what actually happens isn’t quite as straightforward as her returning one night to find the quilt gone, and that extra level of complexity and unpredictability is another element that helps Intimate Apparel exceed initial expectations.

Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage is booking until the 9th of August at the Donmar Warehouse.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.