The experience of Lynn Nottage’s lyrical drama, “Intimate Apparel” ” at San Diego Repertory Theatre through April 9 ” affirms the good taste of America’s regional theaters, which have made it the season’s most-produced play. Set in 1905 New York City, the touching, well-made play is beautifully staged by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, and fluidly acted, almost inhabited, by a knockout company of six upon Fred Kinney’s two-level, multiple-locale set. It’s the best all-around production seen at the Rep in years.
A 2003 co-production of Baltimore Center Stage and Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory Theatre, “Intimate Apparel” was produced by New York’s Roundabout Theatre in 2004 and received the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Outer Critics Circle awards for best new play.
The story, which is based on the life of Nottage’s great-grandmother, concerns Esther (the extraordinary Lisa Renee Pitts), a virtuous, 35-year-old African American seamstress. Single, chaste and 35, Esther has lived for 18 years in a respectable women’s boarding house owned by the imperious but loving Mrs. Dickson (Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson). Saving money for her dream of purchasing a beauty salon in Harlem, Esther makes her living by creating luscious lingerie (costume design by Jennifer Brawn Gittings) for a variety of women. They range from Mrs. Van Buren (Lisel Gorell-Getz), a lonely and very wealthy Fifth Avenue matron, to Mayme (Lisa H. Paton), a good-hearted prostitute who plays ragtime piano in a house of ill repute.
Even though she can’t read or write, Esther, with assistance from Mayme and Mrs. Van Buren, enters into a correspondence with George (Michael A. Shepperd), a strapping laborer who’s working on the Panama Canal. We see the imposing Shepperd as he intones George’s poetic, longing-laced letters in lilting West Indies patois.
At the same time, Esther’s friendship with her kindly fabric merchant, Mr. Marks (the excellent Lance Smith), deepens into something more sensuous and intimate, constrained only by Mr. Marks’ Orthodox Judaism and their racial/class differences.
George proposes marriage and arrives in New York looking much less poetic, more menacing and lustful now that he’s earthbound and real. He sweeps Esther off her feet. She is married wearing the white dress she fashioned from the lovely embroidered fabric that was a gift from Mr. Marks. The masterfully staged wedding night portends a bittersweet ending to this tale of loneliness, longing and ultimate courage.
In her early 40s, Nottage is an exceptional writer. Her other plays include “Fabulation! Or, the Re-education of Undine,” which recently completed a sold-out run at Playwrights Horizons; “Crumbs from the Table of Joy,” seen at the Old Globe in 2001; “Las Meninas,” seen at Cygnet Theatre during the theatre’s first season; and “Mud, River, Stone.”
“Intimate Apparel” continues at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday, through April 9 at San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza.
Tickets range from $27 to $42, and are available at the box office, by calling (619) 544-1000 or by visiting www.sandiegorep.com.
