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Zainab Jah as Mayme in WHAT’s “Intimate Apparel.” |
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Ramona Alexander as the lead character Esther and Stephen Russell as the Jewish fabric dealer Mr. Marks in “Intimate Apparel.” |
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‘Intimate Apparel’ covers up a little too much
Theater Review
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
“Intimate Apparel” at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater is a small story told in a large and heartfelt way with solid acting, great sets, period costumes and more.
The play is set at the turn of the previous century in New York City.
It revolves around Esther (Ramona Alexander), a “colored” woman (in the vernacular of that era) approaching middle age with no husband, no suitor and little hope for either. She has left home in the Carolinas in her teens to make her way in New York and is still living in the same rented room she found 18 years ago.
Her room, like her life, is sparse and contains little beyond the necessary. Her treadle-operated sewing machine on which she earns her keep, by designing and sewing all manner of undergarments for everybody from society dames on Fifth Avenue to working girls down at the local bar, dominates the room and defines her life.
Esther’s busybody landlady, Mrs. Dickson (Sharon Hope), holds socials to try to match up her houseful of young ladies who board with eligible men. but none has gravitated to Esther.
Two of Esther’s customers — Mrs. Van Buren (Dakota Shepard), a lonely, white uptown society lady whose husband would rather stray than stay, and Mayme (Zainab Jah), a dark-skinned downtown bawdy girl who works by the hour to pay the bills but really lives for the music she writes and plays on a piano in her room — form the dramatic core. Esther makes silky bead-trimmed bustier-corsets for them, for Mrs. Van Buren to hopefully rekindle an interest in the eyes of her husband and for Mayme to give her something nice of her own.
Esther’s fabric comes from Mr. Marks (Stephen Russell), a Jewish merchant with a gentle way and kind heart who may feel more than he should for Esther.
Enter George (Neil Dawson), a young Caribbean laborer working on the Panama Canal. He has learned of Esther from an old friend from the Carolinas who is also working on the canal. They begin to correspond.
Everyone has a reaction, from Mrs. Dickson’s skepticism to Mrs. Van Buren’s voyeuristic pleasure. And when Esther tells Mayme, “I ain’t expecting anything,” Mayme rejoins, “Yes you are, everybody is.”
As the correspondence and romance heats up, Esther believes him to be everything she hoped for. But as the play works its way through the storyline of small hopes and thwarted dreams, layers are peeled back to show hidden expectations and unexpected turns.
Each of the actors does a good job, but Jah gives a breakout performance as the living-in-the-moment prostitute. Russell has some lovely nuanced moments as well.
Sound was spotty to start on review night with some lines hard to catch but it was soon leveled out. Lighting worked well to set moods and to transition the dozens of tiny vignettes that made up the whole of the play.
Ted Vitale’s sets made great use of the Julie Harris Stage, and five entirely different sets existed simultaneously, allowing for 14 quick scene changes.
In all, a good night of theater but somehow one that fails to satisfy as deeply as might be hoped for. There is nothing to fault in the acting — to the contrary. Direction overall is well-handled by Jeff Zinn and Stephen Russell but they may have made some questionable choices about how to handle certain scenes that could have been played with more depth. Instead they skirted dramatic situations with humor or melodrama. There were strong scenes in the second act that made this reviewer wish for that level of engagement throughout.
The play itself, a finalist for a Pulitzer in 2004, is a period piece, and more than just being set in 1905, it is at times reminiscent of theater of an earlier era. But none of those elements casts a negative light on this production. They amount to a couple of missteps in an otherwise spirited dance. It’s well worth seeing and a good start to WHAT’s 2008 season.
Intimate Apparel, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, Julie Harris Stage, 8 pm Wed.-Sat., through June 14, 3:30 pm June 14. Tickets $32, $22 for matinee. Information (508) 432-WHAT.
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
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May 29th, 2008