Intimate Apparel (Alan Hall)

RLT’s “Intimate Apparel” Not Just Another Case of
Love Sought, Love Lost

RALEIGH - Raleigh Little Theatre’s staggering 72nd season opened its first Gaddy-Goodwin Theatre production last weekend. The play, Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel,” is a compact little drama that is compelling, not because of its subject matter, but more because of its texture, a word whose definition can take on many different aspects in this play. The subject of the play is not at all new: a woman too many years on her own grabs at what may be, for her, the last chance at love and an unsolitary life. The result is all too predictable. But the story that leads us down this path is nothing compared to all the stories that go into it. In an age of industrial revolution and massive, new-century growth, many of the things that are never spoken of in polite society continue to weave their ages-old tales. And in a forgotten corner of New York City, a small band of Negro friends try to look forward in an age still too Post-Civil-War to give them much hope at all. The straining jetties that hold back an ocean of passion and desire within this small circle are about to be blasted, when an able-bodied but prideful Caribbean laborer is dropped suddenly, like a hand grenade, into their midst.

It only takes six characters to create the path on which a strong and willful Black woman tests her very hard-won sensibilities in a battle between her mind and her heart. Esther Mills (Barbette Hunter) is a 35 year-old seamstress who earns a fairly good living sewing intimate apparel for the ladies of her neighborhood. By 1905 she has been doing this for 18 years, mostly from her room in a boarding house run by Mrs. Dickson (LeDawna Akins), a respectable woman who knows her mind and, for better or worse, most of the minds of the several young black women who live under her roof. The rest of Esther’s circle as we see them are: Mayme (Sharon Tazewell), a black lady of the evening who pays well for Esther’s creations; Mrs. Van Buren (Staci Sabarsky), a Southern woman of New York society who is another of Esther’s clients; Mr. Marks (Leon Sabarsky), a Romanian who is Esther’s supplier of fine fabric; and the man with whom Esther corresponds, George Armstrong (Joseph Callender), who is spending his time digging the Panama Canal.

What proceeds throughout act 1 is a recipe for disaster: George has gotten Esther’s name from a fellow laborer, who was once an elder in Esther’s church in North Carolina. He writes her in an effort to establish a link to the outside world. Esther cannot read; she is the daughter of a slave and had no schooling. She came to New York after her parents died, and was taught her trade by her first landlady. The correspondence is frowned upon by Mrs. Dickson, but Esther can see no harm, as long as the lonely man is so far away. She enlists the help of Mrs. Van Buren, a young and pretty matron of society whose failure to conceive is driving her husband away. The two conspire to “highlight her strengths,” and both Esther and George fall in love with the person they believe is writing to them. George, it turns out, is not actually writing his letters, either.

The delightfully compact set incorporates both height and width to create a myriad of settings, from Esther’s room, complete with sewing machine, to Mayme’s room, with her standing grand piano, stage left. Mrs. Van Buren’s boudoir, and her decanter of cognac, appear stage right; and the tent in which George spends his nights, somewhere in Panama, fits neatly overhead of the main stage. While three beds make up the central pieces of furniture, they represent not only the rooms of these characters but also serve nicely to evoke the sense of the several bedrooms that make up Mrs. Dickson’s boarding house. Due to the splendid staging of director Linda O’Day Young, the characters move easily from one “room” to another without even needing a lowering of the lights to do so. The addition of a pair of low shelves, combined with Esther’s center-stage sewing table, serve to create the shop of Mr. Marks. While the play might have been less, shall we say, crowded on the main Cantey stage, the intimacy of the Gaddy Goodwin brings us to an “intimate” closeness with these characters, and with the multiple reams of lovely fine fabric that allow Esther to make her much-sought-after creations.

Aiding Hunter in bringing this story to the stage are a husband and wife team, a “triple-threat” actor, and a native New Yorker. Staci (Mrs. Van Buren) and Leon (Mr. Marks) Sabarsky play entirely different roles that would never have met on the streets of New York City; nevertheless these characters are both bound by the regulations extant in their separate societies. Mrs. Van Buren is sweet, pretty, and woefully outmatched by a barnyard of New York Society cows. The failure of the pair to produce an heir is laid squarely on her shoulders, and Sabarsky portrays a very lonely Southern Belle who finds herself alone in another world. Mr. Marks is more at home in his small shop, knowing as he does his trade and his clientele well. But Mr. Marks is also burdened, by his faith; his betrothed waits for him in Romania, having never seen his face. So the feelings he is having for his best customer are as forbidden to him as they are surprising for her. Mayme (Sharon Tazewell), a woman young and pretty and not at all ashamed of using her assets to her advantage, is betrayed by the same man as Esther; it is a stunning blow that she never would have allowed to happen with anyone else. That is was the man who had married her best friend is a devastating loss. And Bronx native LeDawna Akins, as Mrs. Dickson, the proper matron landlady who broods over her “chicks,” accepts Esther back into her home without even asking for an explanation. For his part, Joseph Callender must do his best to make us like him in act 1, and detest him in act 2. This model, comedian and actor is well up to the challenge.

So what, we ask ourselves during the live music played during intermission, is the point of this play in which we can see, long before it happens, the result of this star-crossed union? There is, we realize, no real joy in this work; whatever highs experienced by any one character are fleeting, at best. These six characters are, we know, just a tiny percentage of all the men and women chewed and eaten by a conscienceless concrete jungle. The story we are witnessing is by no means new; it is a drama in the classic Greek sense. We know, long before these characters, that they are doomed. Regardless, Esther’s story must be told, and retold, in all its many manifestations, in all its rippling diversity. This is a classic American tragedy; it could not take place in any other country. All these characters are fighting for their lives; nowhere but in the Melting Pot could they have brushed so closely together. They tell us, each in their own way, that we must fight for our dreams, even if our dreams destroy us; for if we cannot dream, and act upon those dreams, then joy and sorrow themselves cease to have meaning.

Raleigh Little Theatre presents “Intimate Apparel” thru Sept. 23 in the Gaddy-Goodwin Theatre, the intimate theater at the other end of the main complex from the Cantey Main Stage. Shows run Thursdays thru Sundays, with evening performances at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3. For your tickets, call the box office at 821-3111; for more information on this play and the season, go to www.raleighlittletheatre.org

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