Intimate Apparel review: ‘Beautifully performed revival’ ★★★

In the midst of Lynn Nottage’s 2003 play which reveals female African- American experience at the turn of the last century, is an Orthodox Romanian Jew called Mr Marks. From his modest shop on New York’s Lower East Side he sells fabric to seamstress Esther played in a beautifully nuanced performance by Emmy-winning The Handmaid Tale star Samira Wiley.

The Jew (Alex Waldmann) and Wiley’s illiterate Esther form the unlikely romantic heart of this lively play which is set in 1905. Only 40 years after the American Civil War it reveals black aspiration being thwarted even in the most progressive part of America: New York.

Alex Waldmann as Mr Marks in Intimate Apparel (Photo: Helen Murray)[Missing Credit]

Still, Esther’s hope is very much alive. During the 18 years and “thousands of stitches” that Esther and her pedal-powered sewing machine have stayed in the boarding house for black women run by matriarchal widow Mrs Dickson (Nicola Hughes), the 35-year-old seamstress has hidden hundreds of dollars into her patchwork eiderdown, and all from making basques for wealthy white women. The savings are to turn Esther’s dream of owning a beauty parlour into a reality.

Despite her age, she even hopes to marry. Certainly the increasingly ardent exchange of letters with George (Kadiff Kirwan), a Barbados-born labourer working on the Panama canal seems to be heading that way.

In this beautifully performed revival everyone is hoping for a better life, including Esther’s most intimate client, the unhappily married Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly) and Esther’s sex worker friend Mayme (an also excellent Faith Omole), whose talent for music is lost to the only profession that will pay. Yet despite George, who Esther has never met in the flesh, it is the attraction between her and Mr Marks that seems to hold most promise.

‘Judaism forbids him to touch a woman who is not his wife

As the couple touch and stroke the same pieces of fabric, their scenes are brimful of suppressed passion: suppressed on her side because having what you want has never been an option, and on his because Judaism forbids him to touch a woman who is not his wife.

“I didn’t know you were married,” says Esther, disappointed. “I’m not," says Mr Marks, with palpable yearning.

It is here that Lynnette Linton’s production most effectively evokes the fabled “melting pot” of New York, with a black woman and an immigrant Jew wilting in the heat of their mutual attraction.

However, basic missteps prevent us from being entirely swept up by the primary purpose of Nottage’s play, to take notice of a neglected New York’s history. Transitions between locations lack clarity making it difficult to tell where scenes are set. And after a swooning Esther announces that George has asked her to marry, my neighbour predicted out loud to her husband that it’s not going to end well. She was only stating the obvious.

As with Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic A Raisin In The Sun we fear for a black family’s precious resources being squandered by a husband’s pipe dreams. That the eiderdown must be breached is as certain as a gun seen in a play’s first act being fired in the third – although knowing a thing is coming does not necessarily reduce the drama of its arrival. And Wiley superbly conveys the kernel of self-belief that prevents Esther from drowning in her insecurity.

But not even the double Pulitzer-winning Nottage can make this plot feel freshly hatched. Except that is, the one involving Esther and Mr Marks.

Intimate Apparel

Donmar Warehouse