Intimate Apparel
At the Arts Club Granville Island Stage until March 10
Tickets: 604-687-1644, artsclub.com
He was her man/but he done her wrong kept running through my head at Intimate Apparel, directed by John Cooper for the Arts Club. But Esther (Marci T. House) doesnt put a bullet root-a-toot-toot as the song goesthrough George (Daren Herbert). She walks out on him, goes back to her treadle sewing machine and gets on with life.
Esther is a 35-year-old African American seamstress, specializing in fancy corsets for rich white women. George, a Barbados labourer on the Panama Canal, woos her by mail. Neither of them can read nor write, though, so the letters are written by others. Esthers letter writers, despite the disapproval of her landlady Mrs. Dickson (Lesley Ewen), are Mrs. VanBuren (Anna Cummer) and Mayme (Marsha Regis), a floozy, and, unaccountably, a friend of Esther.
American playwright Lynn Nottage packs a lot into her script: the legacy of slavery, the horrors of the Canal construction, the plight of unmarried women back in the early 1900s, the marital woes of barren women and the cultural isolation of Orthodox Jews; she even throws in a little girl-on-girl love.
It all gets a bit large but some excellent performances make it fit in some of the right places. House brings both blushing innocence and sustained dignity to Esther; her scenes with Jonathon Young, who plays the Jewish yard goods merchant, are as fragile and beautiful as the fabrics she buys from him.
Daren Herberts early scenes are touching, but George seems to turn nasty not because hes inherently wicked but because the playwright needs a villain.
Pam Johnsons multi-roomed set, lit by Itai Erdal, take us back to New York City, 1905. As for the many fabulous lace and bead-trimmed corsets that costumer Alison Green whipped up, auctioning them off at the end of the run would bring a handsome dividend. Dibs on the blue one!
