Intimate Apparel by Lynn Cottage – ★★★★★

What would you trade to put an end to the lifelong desire to be held, and to stay held? What if it costs you your life as you know it? Or the fragile hopes of a future dreamed, would you exchange it for the certainty of a life in someone’s arms?

By the end of Lyn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, this is the dilemma facing Esther (Samira Wiley), a designer of women’s lingerie whose life is defined by longing, and waiting. With a winning combination of outstanding performance, writing and direction from Lynette Linton, Intimate Apparel is a triumphant, moving and evocative exploration of love and life in 1905 New York for a black woman in search of a place to rest her heart.

Inspired by a photograph of Nottage’s own great-grandmother, a seamstress from Barbados, Intimate Apparel follows Esther who, when we meet her, is a 35-year old “spinster” living in a boarding house run by the formidable Mrs Dickson (Nicola Hughes). What Esther lacks in confidence, she more than makes up for in skill as she creates beautiful designs for the likes of Mrs Van Buren, a rich but lonely client who shares a tense relationship with her husband, and her dear friend Mayme (Faith Omole), a sex worker with a hustling spirit, who she shares her dream of opening a beauty parlour with, doubling as a safe haven for black women to thrive.

She shares forbidden but innocent and tender moments with Mr Marks, a Jewish-Romanian man from whom she buys her fabrics, where she gets to share her love for her work with someone who sees and understands her. Esther’s life is relatively happy, but she wants more and feels unable to grasp it. That is until she starts receiving love letters from a Panamanian labourer named George Armstrong (Kadiff Kirwan), who plans to marry her. Esther allows herself to unravel, and her little corner of the world changes.

The staging of this story is ghostlike, and eerie. Images of “unidentified negroes” from the 1900s, going about their lives are projected onto the spaces around the stage. There are stained walls, and windows aglow with faded, blurred pink hues. Above the stage is a long balcony, where George overlooks the audience, yearning for Esther in these illustrious letters whose contents are also projected, allowing the words to resonate. Pieces of the set are intentionally scattered across the stage, allowing the cast to use them at will. The use of prop is ingenius: money scattered across the floor in one scene is picked up by another character in the next, Esther’s personal chest of belongings becomes Mrs Van Buren’s ottoman in the next. The transitions are seamless each time. 

Between the story and the cast performances, it is hard to highlight what was more captivating, but undoubtedly Samira Wiley is amazing. Her portrayal of Esther is filled with sincerity, you can see hope and fear battling in her eyes, and she commands the stage with a quiet confidence. She leads by example, and the rest of the cast match her brilliance. Kirwan triggers the full range of our emotions from awe, hatred and disgust as George Armstrong, Omole is starlike as Mayme and Hughes as Mrs Dickson is simply fabulous. Wiley has palpable chemistry with Waldmann whose awkwardness and charm makes the restraints of their romance heartbreaking. There’s a similar sense of bittersweetness to her relationship with Mrs Van Buren, who is perfect as a housewife who hates her husband and just wants to feel connected to something or someone.

Set during America’s Jim Crow era, the play is not defined by the limitations that black people, and particularly black women faced. They are present, but not the sole focus of their characters. Instead they are lovers, friends, dreamers, mourners and rejoicers. For black women during this time, making clothes and garments could prove to be lucrative and those who could, like Esther, tried to make better lives for themselves. This did not make them exempt from the way that married women were allowed to navigate society in a way that single women could not. These are just a few of the themes present in the play, alongside the immigrant identity, sexuality, religion, capitalism and loneliness.

The world of Intimate Apparel is oneI  wanted to stay in, to witness the rest of Esther’s journey, and see what becomes of the characters, analyse who else she might meet. Linton’s take on the play is excellent and deserving of the continuous standing ovations received. A play that moves, and provokes and makes you laugh in between tears: perfection.

Intimate Apparel is showing at Donmar Warehouse until 9th August.

★★★★★

By Melody Adebisi