[NEohioPAL]Berko review: INTIMATE APPAREL (CPH)

[Roy Berko]

‘Intimate Apparel’ A GOOD FIT AT CPH

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

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Lynn Nottage is one of America’s great new
playwrights.  Her play ‘INTIMATE APPAREL,’ now on
stage at the Cleveland Play House, was the recipient
of five major national awards, including the New York
Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Outer Circle Award
as Best Play of 2004.  

It’s the beginning of the 20th Century.  Esther, a
plain and unsophisticated black woman, creates
intimate apparel for socialites and a woman of ill
repute.  Desperate for love and marriage, she receives
a letter supposedly written by George, a young
Barbados worker on the Panama Canal who has been given
Esther’s name by the son of her minister.  Esther
can’t read or write, but one of her wealthy clients
volunteers to scribe letters for her.  And, so, a
series of documents are traded back and forth.  
     
Esther gets joy from the beautiful silks she buys from
an Orthodox Jewish merchant, Mr. Marks.   Their
relationship is commercial, but each looks forward to
their contacts. He saves beautiful fabric just for
her. He, too, is in a distant relationship as he has
been matched with a Rumanian woman he has never met.

George arrives in New York and he and Esther are
married.  Their joy, is short-lived.  George’s
drinking, philandering and cheating Esther out of her
hard earned money soon cause havoc.  

This is a history of the black, the female and the
immigrant experience in America.  It is also an
exploration of the true world of one of Nottage's
aunts who left the rural South to become a seamstress
in New York.

The Cleveland Play House presentation, which is listed
as a joint production with the Actor’s Theatre of
Louisville, is very effective.  The Louisville-honed
cast is generally excellent and director Timothy Bond,
the Associate Artistic Director of the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival, does an excellent job of pacing
the nearly two-and-a-half hour show, so that the
audience is engrossed throughout.

Gwendolyn Mulamba is compelling as Esther.  She
controls the stage with her complete emersion into the
character.  This is an impressive performance.  

Denise Cormier is excellent as the frustrated wealthy
patron for whom Esther not only makes intimate
apparel, but is her emotional outlet.  Tiffany Adams
is effective as the prostitute.  She has a fine
singing voice.  It is a shame that she doesn’t play
the piano as her faking the movements, with the sound
obviously coming from off-stage, was distracting.  

Joe Hickey is convincing as Mr. Marks, the Orthodox
Jewish fabric merchant.  His scenes with Mulamba are
awkwardly charming.  Each character exposes his/her
“intimate apparel,” their cultural histories, in a
series of well-paced and beautifully interpreted
scenes.  

Erik LaRay Harvey had some excellent moments as
Esther’s pen pal and eventual husband.  There were
times, however, when his concentration seemed to slip,
his accent disappear, and his performance flowed along
the surface.  Perri Gaffney was not always convincing
as Esther’s landlady.

Paul Owen’s multi-level stage was very effective,
Lorraine Venberg’s costumes era correct, and Darren
McCroom’s lighting enhanced the production. 

Be warned that the poor acoustics in the Bolton
Theatre makes hearing some of the dialogue difficult. 
This creates special problems early in the show as the
listeners’ ears adjust to Esther’s necessary Southern
Black pronunciation.    

CAPSULE JUDGMENT:  ‘INTIMATE APPAREL’ is not only an
appropriate presentation during Black History Month,
but is also a play and a production worth seeing.

For tickets to  ‘INTIMATE APPAREL,’ which runs through
March 5 in the  Drury Theatre  of the Cleveland Play
House call 216-795-7000 or go on-line to
www.clevelandplayhouse.com. 




Roy Berko's web page can be found at www.royberko.info.  His theatre and dance reviews appear on NeOHIOpal, an on-line source.   To subscribe to this free service via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.fredsternfeld.com/mailman/listinfo/neohiopal.

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